








PRUE AND I 

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George William Curtis 


PRUE AND I 

AND THE 

PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

BY 

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


EDITED BY 

VINCENT B. BRECHT 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
NORTHEAST HIGH SCHOOL 
PHILADELPHIA 

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1919 


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©aA,5l5785 (N 


'Vv^ 


TO 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen, 

To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men, — 

That voice whose music, for I’ve heard you sing 
Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring. 

That pen whose rapid ease ne’er trips with haste. 

Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste. 

First Steele’s, then Goldsmith’s, next it came to you, 
Whom Thackeray rated best of all our crew, — 

Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours ; 

Had the world tempted, all its chariot doors 
Had swung on flattened hinges to admit 
Such high bred manners, such good natured wit ; 

At court, in senates, who so flt to serve ? 

And both invited, but you would not swerve, 

All meaner prizes waiving that you might 
In civic duty spend your heat and light, 

Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain 
Refusing posts men grovel to attain. 

Good Man all own you ; what is left me, then. 

To heighten praise with but Good Citizen ? 

James Russell Lowell, 

in “ Heartsease and Rue ” (1874). 





PREFATORY NOTE 


It is hoped that this edition of selections from the 
writings of George William Curtis may lead the student 
to a better understanding of the life and writings of 
one who fitly represents the refinement and ease of an 
older generation of American life and the turmoil and 
bustle of a later and more strenuous age. The leisurely 
vein of the essays in Prue and I and the more energetic 
mood found in the address on The Public Duty of 
Educated Men exemplify the diversity of his talents as 
a master of English prose. 

The text here given follows that of the accepted 
editions. The notes are intended not to be exhaustive, 
but to invite the reader to make excursions of his own 
into the field of literature through which the author 
himself has browsed. 

I wish to acknowledge the sympathetic interest of 
Prof. Frances Hovey Stoddard and Mr. George R. 
Ellsler and the friendly critical comment of Dr. John 
Louis Haney given in the preparation of this little 
volume. 

Vincent B. Brecht. 

Philadelphia, April 19, 1919. 






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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction xiii 

I. Biographical Sketch xiii 

II. Critical Comment xix 

III. Bibliography . xxiii 

PART I 

PRUE AND I 

A Word to the Gentle Reader. 

Dinner Time 1 

My Chateaux 23 

Sea from Shore 49 

Titbottom’s Spectacles 80 

A Cruise in the ‘Flying Dutchman* . . .115 

Family Portraits 147 

Our Cousin the Curate 160 

PART II 

The Public Duty of Educated Men . . . 181 

Notes . • * • • 5 ? • • • 206 

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INTRODUCTION 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

George William Curtis was born in Providence, 
Rhode Island, on February 24, 1824. He was a 
descendant in the sixth generation of a New England 
family which sailed from London to America, May 
6, 1635. He came of a stock which was independent 
and self-reliant; resourceful and quick to seize op- 
portunity ; resolute and faithful to duty ; loyal to 
friends and feared as foes. The reappearance of these 
qualities in the man has at times been lost sight of in 
the gentleness and urbanity of his work as an author. 

His father, Henry Curtis, moved from Worcester, 
Massachusetts, to Providence, where he married the 
daughter of James Burrill, Jr., Chief Justice of Rhode 
Island and a United States Senator. This inheritance 
of sturdy Americanism and the invigorating environ- 
ment of the seaport town in which he spent his boy- 
hood days are reflected throughout the pages of “ Prue 
and 1.” He and his brother, James Burrill Curtis, two 
years his elder, attended the same school in Jamaica 
Plain for the six years before 1835. It was while here 
that they fell under the spell of Emerson’s influence, 
xiii 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


The family moved to New York in 1839, where Curtis ! 
first felt the enchantment of life in a large city, and 
where he became a clerk for an importing house, a 
position which at the end of a year he relinquished 
as one not affording him work congenial to his tastes. 

In 1842 he and his brother became members of the 
Brook Farm Community. Here they spent two years 
in pleasant and profitable days of outdoor life and in- ] 
door study, under the stimulus of congenial surround- ! 
ings and friendly teachers who made possible their 
mastery of languages and music and gave them a 
knowledge of agriculture. After spending the winter 
of 1844 in New York they lived for two years in Con- 
cord, dividing their time principally between labor on 
a farm and study and recreation. Here they came in 
contact with men whose names have given fame to 
the quiet New England town, and whose thought 
exerted a powerful influence upon all who came within 
range of their mental activities. 

In 1846 Curtis went to Europe, where he remained 
until 1850, visiting in that time Rome, Berlin, Paris, 
and the Nile and Palestine, and acquiring that under- 
standing of matters of art, nature, and human life 
abroad which gave him a splendid equipment for the 
career of authorship upon which he had decided to 
enter. The “Nile Notes of a Howadji” and “The 
Howadji in Syria” appeared in 1851 and 1852. These 
two books became popular immediately and paved 
the way for the greater successes of “Lotus Eating” 


INTRODUCTION 


XV 


(1852) and “The Potiphar Papers” (1853), the latter 
having been published first in Putnam's Magazine 
which Curtis had helped to conduct. 

In 1854 he assumed complete charge of the “Easy 
Chair” of Harper's Magazine. He also became a regu- 
lar contributor to Harper's Weekly. Through these 
two mediums and that of the lecture platform he 
continued to speak throughout his lifetime on a variety 
of literary, social, and political topics. When Putnam's 
Monthly was established he contributed to that peri- 
odical the series of sketches which later appeared 
under the title of “Prue and I.” 

“ Prue and I ” represents the dolce far niente period 
of the author’s life in which the excursions of fancy 
are as real as those in the more material world, when, 
as Whittier says — 

“he who wanders widest lifts 
No more of Beauty’s jealous veil 
Than he who from the doorway sees 
The miracle of flowers and trees. 

Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air 

And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer.” 

Beginning with his marriage in 1856 to Miss Anna 
Shaw, his literary career took a more practical turn. 
In the same year he became involved in the failure 
of the firm which published Putnam's Magazine and 
for nearly twenty years thereafter he worked inces- 
santly to help pay a debt for which he was not legally 
bound. 1856 was the year of the Presidential cam- 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION 


paign, and Curtis delivered his first public speech in 
an address made before the literary societies of Wes- 
leyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, on 
^‘The Duty of the American Scholar to Politics and | 
the Times.” In 1859 he visited Philadelphia to speak j 
on ^'The Present Aspects of the Slavery Question.” 
Despite strenuous attempts to keep him from speak- 
ing at this stormy meeting, he bore himself in a manner j 
which soon proved him master of the situation. A 
year later he went as a delegate to the Republican 
National Convention at Chicago, where he again 
proved his mettle as a speaker. A motion was made 
to incorporate in the convention platform of his 
party the portion of the Declaration of Independence 
affirming the equality and defining the rights of man. 
The motion was lost, at which Curtis as a delegate 
from New York arose to his feet. In the tumult he 
could not at first be heard. He calmly waited until 
he had the attention of his audience and then said, 
*‘I have only a few words to say to you, but I shall 
say them if I stand here until to-morrow morning.” 
He defied the meeting to defeat an amendment which 
would reject the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
dependence. His resolute stand and daring words 
caused the measure to be reworded and carried on a 
wave of enthusiasm in its new form. 

In 1863 he became the political editor of Harper's 
Weekly. In 1864 and 1865 he championed the cause 
of clean politics by delivering his lecture on “ Political 


INTRODUCTION 


XVll 


Infidelity” over fifty times. He was appointed by 
General Grant in 1871 to the office of Chairman of the 
Civil Service Commission and from then on he labored 
continually in that cause. In 1881 he was made first 
president of the National Service Reform League. 
In 1890 he became Chancellor of the University of 
the State of New York. Both of these positions he 
held until his death in Staten Island on August 31, 
1892. 



CRITICAL COMMENT 

“Prue and was a series of papers written, as 
Curtises letters show, in odd moments and with great 
rapidity, to meet the exigencies of the magazine. But 
the papers survive as an example of the pure literary 
work of the author. The opulence and extravagance 
of the Howadji books disappear, but the rich imagina- 
tion, and sportive fancy, the warm and life-giving 
sentiment, the broad philosophy, are expressed in a 
style of singular beauty, flexibility, and strength.” 

Edward Cary. 

More truly of the Irving type, with a Brook Farm 
fervor added, was the distinguished editor, lecturer, 
and patriot, George William Curtis. That shining soul, 
^Toyal to whatever is generous and humane, full of 
sweet hope, and faith and devotion,” is radiant still 
in the jewel lights of Prue and I.” 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Putnam^s Monthly was established in the same 
year (1856), and Mr. Curtis was one of the original 
editors. For this magazine he wrote a number of 
sketches and essays, some of which were afterwards 
published with the title “Prue and I.” In this work 
xix 


XX 


CRITICAL COMMENT 


Mr. Curtis is seen at his best, in our judgment. A 
pretty rill of a story runs through it like a musical 
little brook through a romantic valley. The pervad- 
ing sentiment is tender and pure. The lovely young 
matron, “True,” is the sharer in the thoughts and the 
reminiscences of the story teller, as well as in his affec- 
tion and “measureless content.” The style is as 
unpretentious and as lovely as the story. If it were 
more musical its melody would glide into verse. The 
sketches are full of the best fruits of reading and travel, 
and preserve for us those picturesque associations 
of the old world for which we look in the note-books 
of tourists in vain. Francis H. Underwood. 

Curtis represents, no doubt, what may prove to be a 
transitory phase of American literature. Even now, 
in the latest as well as in the earliest essays, there 
is a flavor of something that is passing away. The 
leisureliness, the dignity, the marked and sometimes 
almost elaborate courtesy of manner, the style in 
which the absence of all impatience is only one mark 
of its invariable distinction — are those of to-day. 
The style flows on with the smoothness of the Concord 
River itself, but without its shallows or sluggishness. 
There are flowers upon its surface, and it mirrors the 
heavens above. George W. Smalley. 

He is the direct descendant of Addison, whose style 
is overrated, of Steele, whose morality is humorous, 
of Goldsmith, whose writing was angelic, and of Irving, 


CRITICAL COMMENT 


XXI 


whose taste was pretty. Mr. Curtis recalls all of 
these, yet he is like none of them. Humorous as they 
are and charming, he is somewhat sturdier, of a more 
robust fibre, with a stronger respect for plain living 
and high thinking, with a firmer grasp on the duties 
of life. Brander Matthews. 

He was not the greatest of those who, in this New 
World, have used the platform as a vantage ground of 
leadership. He had not the organ tones of Webster, 
nor the incisive style and matchless vocal skill of 
Phillips, nor the compass of Beecher; but in that 
fine harmony of theme, treatment, style, and per- 
sonality which made the speech literature, he sur- 
passed them all. Hamilton Wright Marie. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The Works of George William Curtis. 

Nile Notes of a Howadji, 1851. 

Lotus Eating, 1852. 

The Wanderer in Syria, 1852. 

The Potiphar Papers, 1853. 

Memoir of A. J. Dowring, in Dowring’s “Rural Essays,’' 
1853. 

Prue and I, 1856. 

The Howadji in Syria, 1857. 

Nile Notes of a Howadji, 1857. 

A Rhyme of Rhode Island and the Times, 1864. 

Sunnyside Book (a collaboration), 1871. 

Eulogy on Charles Sumner, 1874. 

Biographical Sketch of T. Winthrop in the latter’s “Cecil 
Dreme,” 1876. 

Life, Character and Writings of W. C. Bryant, 1879. 
Eulogy on Wendell Phillips, 1884. 

J. L. Motley’s Correspondence, 1889. 

Introduction to “Modern Ghosts” (Selections from Mau- 
passant and other authors, 1890). 

Party and Patronage, National Civil Service Reform League 
Addresses, 1890, 1892. 

From the Easy Chair, Essays, 1892. 

Orations and Addresses (edited by C. E. Norton), 1894. 

Biographical Material. 

George William Curtis, by E. Cary, 1894 (“American Men 
of Letters”). 


xxiii 


XXIV 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Early Letters : To J. S. Dwight, Brook Farm and Concord, 
edited by G. W. Cooke, 1898. 

George William Curtis : a Eulogy, by William Winter, 
1893. 

Commemorative Addresses on George William Curtis, 
edited by Parke Godwin, 1893. 

The Library of Literary Criticism. — C. W. Moulton. 

The Century Cyclopedia of Names. — Benjamin E. Smith. 
Gail Hamilton’s Life in Letters. 

Heartsease and Rue. — James Russell Lowell. 

Years of Experience. — Georgiana Bruce Kirby. 

Literary Shrines. — Theodore F. Wolfe. 

My Study Fire, — 2d Series. — Hamilton Wright Mabie. 
Eccentricities of Genius. — James Pond Burton. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Journal. 

Library of World’s Best Literature. — Warner. 

American Literature and Other Papers. — Edwin Percy 
Whipple. 

Studies of Men. — George W. Smalley. 

Correspondence. — John Lotlirop Motley. 


PART I 


PRUE AND I 


TO 

MRS. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, 

IN MEMORY OF THE HAPPY HOURS AT OUR 


CASTLES IN SPAIN 


A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER 


An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and 
black trousers in the morning, who rarely goes to the 
opera, and never dines out, is clearly a person of no 
fashion and of no superior sources of information. 
His only journey is from his house to his office; his 
only satisfaction is in doing his duty ; his only happi- 
ness is in Prue and his children. 

What romance can such a life have? What stories 
can such a man tell ? 

Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the 
parquet at the opera, and see Aurelia smiling in the 
boxes, and holding her court of love, and youth, and 
beauty, that the historians have not told of a fairer 
queen, nor the travellers seen devouter homage. And 
when I remember that it was in misty England that 
quaint old George Herbert sang of the — 

“ Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright ° — 

The bridal of the earth and sky,” 

I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clearer air, 
and do not believe that Italian sunsets have a more 
gorgeous purple or a softer gold. 

So, as the circle of my little life revolves, I console 


A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER 


myself with believing, what I cannot help believing, ! 
that a man need not be a vagabond to enjoy the 
sweetest charm of travel, but that all countries and 
all times repeat themselves in his experience. This is ! 
an old philosophy, I am told, and much favoured by 
those who have travelled ; and I cannot but be glad 
that my faith has such a fine name and such com- 
petent witnesses. I am assured, however, upon the 
other hand, that such a faith is only imagination. 
But, if that be true, imagination is as good as many | 
voyages — and how much cheaper ! — a consideration j 
which an old book-keeper can never afford to forget. j 

I have not found, in my experience, that travellers | 
always bring back with them the sunshine of Italy or i 
the elegance of Greece. They tell us that there are ; 
such things, and that they have seen them ; but, per- i 
haps, they saw them, as the apples in the garden of 
the Hesperides° were sometimes seen — over the wall. 

I prefer the fruit which I can buy in the market to 
that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but of 
which there is no flavour in his story. Others, like 
Moses Primrose,® bring us a gross of such spectacles 
as we prefer not to see ; so that I begin to suspect a 
man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and 
mind, if he would ever see them with his eyes. 

I know that this may be only a device of that com- 
passionate imagination designed to comfort me, who 
shall never take but one other journey than my daily 
beat. Yet there have been wise men who taught 
that all scenes are but pictures upon the mind ; and if 


A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER 


I can see them as I walk the street that leads to my 
office, or sit at the office-window looking into the 
court, or take a little trip down the bay or up the 
river, why are not my pictures as pleasant and as 
profitable as those which men travel for years, at great 
cost of time, and trouble, and money, to behold ? 

For my part, I do not believe that any man can see 
softer skies than I see in Prue’s eyes ; nor hear sweeter 
music than I hear in Prue’s voice; nor find a more 
heaven-lighted temple than I know Prue’s mind to be. 
And when I wish to please myself with a lovely image 
of peace and contentment, I do not think of the plain 
of Sharon,® nor of the valley of Enna,® nor of Arcadia,® 
nor of Claude’s® pictures ; but, feeling that the fairest 
fortune of my life is the right to be named with her, 
I whisper gently, to myself, with a smile — for it seems 
as if my very heart smiled within me, when I think of 
her — Prue and I.” 





PRUE AND I 


DINNER-TIME 

“Within this hour it will be dinner-time; 

I’ll view the manners of the town, 

Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings.” 

Comedy of Errors. 

In the warm afternoons of the early summer, it is 
my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square and 
along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour when the diners- 
out are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and 
refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheer- 5 
ful expanse of white waistcoat that illumines those 
streets at that hour, and mark the variety of emotions . 
that swell beneath all that purity. A man going 
out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect. 
Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and which 10 
he has carefully buttoned, that he may not make an 
awkward pause in the hall of his friend’s house, I am 
sure he would search his pocket for a cent to give the 
wan beggar at the corner. It is impossible just now, 
my dear woman ; but God bless you ! 15 

It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of black. 

If my man be young and only lately cognizant of 
B 1 


2 


PRUE AND I 


the rigours of the social law, he is a little nervous 
at being seen in his dress suit — body coat and black 
trousers — before sunset. For in the last days of May 
the light lingers long over the freshly leafed trees 
sin the Square, and lies warm along th6 Avenue. All 
winter the sun has not been permitted to see dress- 
coats. They come out only with the stars, and fade 
with ghosts, before the dawn. Except, haply, they 
be brought homeward before breakfast in an early 
10 twilight of hackney-coach. Now, in the budding 
and bursting summer, the sun takes his revenge, and 
looks aslant over the tree-tops and the chimneys 
upon the most unimpeachable garments. A cat may 
look upon a king. 

15 I know my man at a distance. If I am chatting 
with the nursery maids around the fountain, I see 
him upon the broad walk of Washington Square 
and , detect him by the freshness of his movement, 

• his springy gait. Then the white waistcoat flashes 
20 in the sun. 

^‘Go on, happy youth,” I exclaim aloud, to the 
great alarm of the nursery maids, who suppose me 
to be an innocent insane person suffered to go at 
large, unattended, — go on, and be happy with fel- 
25 low waistcoats over fragrant wines.” 

It is hard to describe the pleasure in this amiable 
spectacle of a man going out to dine. I, who am 
a quiet family man, and take a quiet family out at 
four o’clock; or, when I am detained down town 


DINNER-TIME 


3 


by a false quantity in my figures, who run into Del- 
monico’s® and seek comfort in a cutlet, am rarely 
invited to dinner and have few white waistcoats. 
Indeed, my dear Prue tells me that I have but one 
in the world, and I often want to confront my eager 
young friends as they bound along, and ask abruptly, 
“What do you think of a man whom one white waist- 
coat suffices?’’ 

By the time I have eaten my modest repast, it is 
the hour for the diners-out to appear. If the day is 
unusually soft and sunny, I hurry my simple meal a 
little, that I may not lose any of my favourite spec- 
tacle. Then I saunter out. If you met me you 
would see that I am also clad in black. But black 
is my natural colour, so that it begets no false theo- 
ries concerning my intentions. Nobody, meeting 
me in full black, supposes that I am going to dine 
out. That sombre hue is professional with me. It 
belongs to book-keepers as to clergymen, physicians, 
and undertakers. We wear it because we follow 
solemn callings. Saving men’s bodies and souls, or 
keeping the machinery of business well wound, are 
such sad professions that it is becoming to drape 
dolefully those who adopt them. 

I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody supposes 
that it is in any danger of being stained by Lafitte.® 
It is a limp cravat with a craven tie. It has none 
of the dazzling dash of the white that my young 
friends sport, or, I should say, sported ; for the white 


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PRUE AND I 


cravat is now abandoned to the sombre professions 
of which I spoke. My young friends suspect that 
the flunkeys of the British nobleman wear such ties, 
and they have, therefore, discarded them. I am sorry 
5 to remark, also, an uneasiness, if not downright scepti- 
cism, about the white waistcoat. Will it extend to 
shirts, I ask myself with sorrow. 

But there is something pleasanter to contemplate 
during these quiet strolls of mine, than the men who 
10 are going to dine out, and that is, the women. They 
roll in carriages to the happy houses which they shall 
honour, and I strain my eyes in at the carriage window 
to see their cheerful faces as they pass. I have already 
dined ; upon beef and cabbage, probably, if it is boiled 
15 day. I am not expected at the table to which Aurelia 
is hastening, yet no guest there shall enjoy more than 
I enjoy, — nor so much, if he considers the meats the 
best part of the dinner. The beauty of the beautiful 
Aurelia I see and worship as she drives by. The vision 
20 of many beautiful Aurelias driving to dinner, is the 
mirage of that pleasant journey of mine along the 
avenue. I do not envy the Persian poets, on those 
afternoons, nor long to be an Arabian traveller. For 
I can walk that street, flner than any of which the 
25 Ispahan® architects dreamed ; and I can see sultanas 
as splendid as the enthusiastic and exaggerating 
Orientals describe. 

But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia’s beauty. 
I delight in her exquisite attire. In these warm days 


DINNER-TIME 


5 


she does not wear so much as the lightest shawl. She 
is clad only in spring sunshine. It glitters in the soft 
darkness of her hair. It touches the diamonds, the 
opals, the pearls, that cling to her arms, and neck, and 
fingers. They flash back again, and the gorgeous silks 
glisten, and the light laces flutter, until the stately 
Aurelia seems to me, in tremulous radiance, swimming 
by. 

I doubt whether you who are to have the inexpressible 
pleasure of dining with her, and even of sitting by her 
side, will enjoy more than I. For my pleasure is in- 
expressible, also. And it is in this greater than yours, 
that I see all the beautiful ones who are to dine at 
various tables, while you only see your own circle, al- 
though that, I will not deny, is the most desirable of all. 

Beside, although my person is not present at your 
dinner, my fancy is. I see Aurelia’s carriage stop, 
and behold white-gloved servants opening wide doors. 
There is a brief glimpse of magnificence for the dull 
eyes of the loiterers outside ; then the door closes. 
But my fancy went in with Aurelia. With her, it 
looks at the vast mirror, and surveys her form at 
length in the Psyche-glass. ° It gives the final shake to 
the skirt, the last flirt to the embroidered handkerchief, 
carefully held, and adjusts the bouquet, complete as 
a tropic nestling in orange leaves. It descends with 
her, and marks the faint blush upon her cheek at the 
thought of her exceeding beauty; the consciousness 
of the most beautiful woman, that the most beautiful 


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PRUE AND I 


woman is entering the room. There is the momentary 
hush, the subdued greeting, the quick glance of the 
Aurelias who have arrived earlier, and who perceive 
in a moment the hopeless perfection of that attire ; 

5 the coiu'tly gaze of gentlemen, who feel the serenity of 
that beauty. All this my fancy surveys; my fancy, 
Aurelia’s invisible cavalier. 

You approach with hat in hand and the thumb of 
your left hand in your waistcoat pocket. You are 
10 polished and cool, and have an irreproachable repose 
of manner. There are no improper wrinkles in your 
cravat ; your shirt-bosom does not bulge ; the trousers 
are accurate about your admirable boot. But you 
look very stiff and brittle. You are a little bullied by 
15 your unexceptionable shirt-collar, which interdicts 
perfect freedom of movement in your head. You are 
elegant, undoubtedly, but it seems as if you might 
break and fall to pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you 
were roughly shaken. 

20 Now, here, I have the advantage of you. My fancy 
quietly surveying the scene, is subject to none of these 
embarrassments. My fancy will not utter common- 
places. That will not say to the superb lady, who 
stands with her flowers, incarnate May, "‘What a 
25 beautiful day. Miss Aurelia.” That will not feel con- 
strained to say something, when it has nothing to say ; 
nor will it be obliged to smother all the pleasant things 
that occur, because they would be too flattering to 
express. My fancy perpetually murmurs in Aurelia’s 


DINNER-TIME 


7 


ear, “ Those flowers would not be fair in your hand, if 
you yourself were not fairer. That diamond necklace 
would be gaudy, if your eyes were not brighter. That 
queenly movement would be awkward, if your soul 
were not queenlier.” 

You could not say such things to Aurelia, although, 
if you are worthy to dine at her side, they are the very 
things you are longing to say. What insufferable stuff 
you are talking about the weather, and the opera, and 
Alboni’s° delicious voice, and Newport, and Saratoga ! 
They are all very pleasant subjects, but do you suppose 
Ixion° talked Thessalian politics when he was admitted 
to dine with Juno ?° 

I almost begin to pity you, and to believe that a 
scarcity of white waistcoats is true wisdom. For now 
dinner is announced, and you, O rare felicity, are to 
hand down Aurelia. But you run the risk of tumbling 
her expansive skirt, and you have to drop your hat 
upon a chance chair, and wonder, en passant ° who will 
wear it home, which is annoying. My fancy runs no 
such risk; is not at all solicitous about its hat, and 
glides by the side of Aurelia, stately as she. There ! 
you stumble on the stair, and are vexed at your own 
awkwardness, and are sure you saw the ghost of a 
smile glimmer along that superb face at your side. My 
fancy doesn’t tumble down-stairs, and what kind of 
looks it sees upon Aurelia’s face, are its own secret. 

Is it any better, now you are seated at table ? Your 
companion eats little because she wishes little. You 


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PRUE AND I 


eat little because you think it is elegant to do so. It 
is a shabby, second-hand elegance, like your brittle 
behaviour. It is just as foolish for you to play with 
the meats, when you ought to satisfy your healthy i 
5 appetite generously, as it is for you, in the drawing- 
room, to affect that cool indifference when you have 
real and noble interests. 

I grant you that fine manners, if you please, are a I 
fine art. But is not monotony the destruction of art ? 
10 Your manners, O happy Ixion, banqueting with Juno, i 
are Egyptian. They have no perspective, no variety. 
They have no colour, no shading. They are all on a 
dead level ; they are flat. Now, for you are a man of 
sense, you are conscious that those wonderful eyes of 
15 Aurelia see straight through all this net-work of elegant 
manners in which you have entangled yourself, and 
that consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is an- 
other trick in the game for me, because those eyes do 
not pry into my fancy. How can they, since Aurelia 
20 does not know of my existence ? 

Unless, indeed, she should remember the first time 
I saw her. It was only last year, in Ma,y. I had 
dined, somewhat hastily, in consideration of the fine 
day, and of my confidence that many would be wend- 
25 ing dinnerwards that afternoon. I saw my Prue 
comfortably engaged in seating the trousers of Ado- 
niram, our eldest boy — an economical care to which 
my darling Prue is not unequal, even in these days and 
in this town — and then hurried toward the avenue. 


DINNER-TIME 


9 


It is never much thronged at that hour. The moment 
is sacred to dinner. As I paused at the corner of 
Twelfth Street, by the church, you remember, I saw 
an apple-woman, from whose stores I determined to 
finish my dessert, which had been imperfect at home. 
But, mindful of meritorious and economical Prue, I 
was not the man to pay exorbitant prices for apples, 
and while still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who 
had tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage 
approaching, and, indeed, already close by. I raised 
my eyes, still munching an apple which I held in one 
hand, while the other grasped my walking-stick (true 
to my instincts of dinner guests, as young women to a 
passing wedding or old ones to a funeral), and beheld 
Aurelia 1 

Old in this kind of observation as I am, there was 
something so graciously alluring in the look that she 
cast upon me, as unconsciously, indeed, as she would 
have cast it upon the church, that, fumbling hastily 
for my spectacles to enjoy the boon more fully, I 
thoughtlessly advanced upon the apple-stand, and, 
in some indescribable manner, tripping, down we all 
fell into the street, old woman, apples, baskets, stand, 
and I, in promiscuous confusion. As I struggled there, 
somewhat bewildered, yet sufficiently self-possessed to 
look after the carriage, I beheld that beautiful woman 
looking at us through the back-window (you could not 
have done it ; the integrity of your shirt-collar would 
have interfered), and smiling pleasantly, so that her 


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PRUE AND I 


going around the corner was like a gentle sunset, so 
seemed she to disappear in her own smiling ; or — if 
you choose, in view of the apple difficulties — like a 
rainbow after a storm. 

5 If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she may 
know of my existence; not otherwise. And even 
then she knows me only as a funny old gentleman, 
who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled over an 
apple-woman. 

10 My fancy from that moment followed her. How 
grateful I was to the wrinkled Eve’s extortion, and to 
the untoward tumble, since it procured me the sight 
of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from that. 
For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered the 
15 house of her host with beaming eyes, and my fancy 
heard her sparkling story. You consider yourself 
happy because you are sitting by her and helping her 
to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. 
But I was her theme for ten mortal minutes. She was 
20 my bard, my blithe historian. She was the Homer 
of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to 
music, in telling it. Think what it is to have inspired 
Urania , to have called a brighter beam into the eyes 
of Miranda, and do not think so much of passing Aurelia 
25 the mottoes, my dear young friend. 

There was the advantage of not going to that dinner. 
Had I been invited, as you were, I should have pestered 
Prue about the buttons on my white waistcoat, instead 
of leaving her placidly piecing adolescent trousers. 


DINNER-TIME 


11 


She would have been flustered, fearful of being too 
late, of tumbling the garment, of soiling it, fearful of 
offending me in some way (admirable woman!). I, in 
my natural impatience, might have let drop a thought- 
less word, which would have been a pang in her heart 
and a tear in her eye, for weeks afterward. 

As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am un- 
accustomed to prandial recreations), I should not have 
had that solacing image of quiet Prue, and the trousers, 
as the background in the pictures of the gay figures I 
passed, making each, by contrast, fairer. I should 
have been wondering what to say and do at the dinner. 
I should surely have been very warm, and yet not have 
enjoyed the rich, waning sunlight. Need I tell you 
that I should not have stopped for apples, but instead 
of economically tumbling into the street with apples 
and apple-women, whereby I merely rent my trousers 
across the knee, in a manner that Prue can readily, and 
at little cost, repair, I should, beyond peradventure, 
have split a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort of 
straining my large hands into them, which would, also, 
have caused me additional redness in the face, and 
renewed fluttering. 

Above all) I should not have seen Aurelia passing 
in her carriage, nor would she have smiled at me, nor 
charmed my memory with her radiance, nor the circle 
at dinner with the sparkling Iliad of my woes. Then 
at the table, I should not have sat by her. You would 
have had that pleasure; I should have led out the 


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PRUE AND I 


maiden aunt from the country, and have talked poultry, 
when I talked at all. Aurelia would not have remarked 
me. Afterward, in describing the dinner to her virtu- 
ous parents, she would have concluded, “and one old 
6 gentleman, whom I didn’t know.” 

No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of 
manner I yet greatly commend, I am content, if you 
are. How much better it was that I was not invited 
to that dinner, but was permitted, by a kind fate, to 
10 furnish a subject for Aurelia’s wit. 

There is one other advantage in sending your fancy 
to dinner, instead of going yourself. It is, that then 
the occasion remains wholly fair in your memory. 
You, who devote yourself to dining out, and who are 
15 to be daily seen affably sitting down to such feasts, as 
I know mainly by hearsay — by the report of waiters, 
guests, and others who were present — you cannot 
escape the little things that spoil the picture, and which 
the fancy does not see. 

20 For instance, in handing you the potage a la Bisque ° 
at the very commencement of this dinner to-day, John, 
the waiter, who never did such a thing before, did this 
time suffer the plate to tip, so that a little of that rare 
soup dripped into your lap — just enough to spoil 
25 those trousers, which is nothing to you, because you 
can buy a great many more trousers, but which little 
event is inharmonious with the fine porcelain dinner 
service, with the fragrant wines, the glittering glass, 
the beautiful guests, and the mood of mind suggested 


DINNER-TIME 


13 


by all of these. There is, in fact, if you will pardon 
a free use of the vernacular, there is a grease-spot upon 
your remembrance of this dinner. 

Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of 
mental result, you can easily imagine the meats a 
little tough; a suspicion of smoke somewhere in the 
sauces ; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little salt ; 
or there might be the graver dissonance of claret not 
properly attempered, or a choice Rhenish below the 
average mark, or the spilling of some of that Are- 
thusa Madeira,® marvellous for its innumerable cir- 
cumnavigations of the globe, and for being as dry as 
the conversation of the host. These things are not up 
to the high level of the dinner ; for wherever Aurelia 
dines, all accessories should be as perfect in their kind 
as she, the principal, is in hers. 

That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse 
than all. Suppose that soup had trickled down the 
unimaginable herthe° of Aurelia’s dress (since it might 
have done so), instead of wasting itself upon your 
trousers ! Could even the irreproachable elegance of 
your manners have contemplated, unmoved, a grease- 
spot upon your remembrance of the peerless Aurelia ? 

You smile, of course, and remind me that that lady’s 
manners are so perfect that, if she drank poison, she 
would wipe her mouth after it as gracefully as ever. 
How much more then, you say, in the case of such a 
slight contretemps^ as spotting her dress, would she 
appear totally unmoved. 


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PRUE AND I 


So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and ^ 
look, as pure as ever ; but, my young friend, her dress ^ 
would not. Once, I dropped a pickled oyster in the ^ 
lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion, her sea- j 
5 green silk gown. I did not love my Prue the less; , 
but there certainly was a very unhandsome spot upon 
her dress. And although I know my Prue to be spot- 
less, yet, whenever I recall that day, I see her in a 
spotted gown, and I would prefer never to have been 
10 obliged to think of her in such a garment. 

Can you not make the application to the case, very 
likely to happen, of some disfigurement of that ex- 
quisite toilette of Aurelia’s? In going down-stairs, 
for instance, why should not heavy old Mr. Carbuncle, ' 
15 who is coming close behind with Mrs. Peony, both 
very eager for dinner, tread upon the hem of that gar- 
ment which my lips would grow pale to kiss? The 
august Aurelia, yielding to natural laws, would be i 
drawn suddenly backward — a very undignified move- 
20 ment — and the dress would be dilapidated. There 
would be apologies, and smiles, and forgiveness, and 
pinning up the pieces, nor would there be the faintest 
feeling of awkwardness or vexation in Aurelia’s mind. 
But to you, looking on, and, beneath all that pure show I 
25 of waistcoat, cursing old Carbuncle’s carelessness, this 
tearing of dresses and repair of the toilette is by no 
means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the very 
impatience that it produces in your mind jars upon the 
harmony of the moment. 


DINNER-TIME 


15 


You will respond, with proper scorn, that you are 
not so absurdly fastidious as to heed the little neces- 
sary drawbacks of social meetings, and that you have 
not much regard for “the harmon^^ of the occasion” 
(which phrase I fear you will repeat in a sneering 
tone). You will do very right in saying this ; and it is 
a remark to which I shall give all the hospitality of my 
mind, and I do so because I heartily coincide in it. I 
hold a man to be very foolish who will not eat a good 
dinner because the table-cloth is not clean, or who 
cavils at the spots upon the sun. But still a man who 
does not apply his eye to a telescope or some kind of 
prepared medium, does not see those spots, while he 
has just as much light and heat as he who does. 

So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all 
the delightful dinners without seeing the spots upon 
the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful Aurelias 
without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest 
who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only 
the best wines, and talks only to the most agreeable 
people. That is something, I can tell you, for you 
might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My 
fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never 
so closely together. It not only hears what she says, 
but it perceives what she thinks and feels. It lies like 
a bee in her flowery thoughts, sucking all their honey. 
If there are unhandsome or unfeeling guests at table, 
it will not see them. It knows only the good and fair. 
As I stroll in the fading light and observe the stately 


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PRUE AND I 


houses, my fancy believes the host equal to his house, 
and the courtesy of his wife more agreeable than her 
conservatory. It will not believe that the pictures on 
the wall and the statues in the corners shame the guests. 

5 It will not allow that they are less than noble. It hears 
them speak gently of error, and warmly of worth. It 
knows that they commend heroism and devotion, and 
reprobate insincerity. My fancy is convinced that 
the guests are not only feasted upon the choicest fruits 
10 of every land and season, but are refreshed by a con- 
sciousness of greater loveliness and grace in human 
character. 

Now you, who actually go to the dinner, may not 
entirely agree with the view my fancy takes of that 
15 entertainment. Is it not, therefore, rather your loss ? 
Or, to put it in another way, ought I to envy you the 
discovery that the guests are shamed by the statues 
and pictures ; — yes, and by the spoons and forks also, 
if they should chance neither to be so genuine nor so 
20 useful as those instruments? And, worse than this, 
when your fancy wishes to enjoy the picture which 
mine forms of that feast, it cannot do so, because you ! 
have foolishly interpolated the fact between the dinner 
and your fancy. 

25 Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and the 
spectacle I enjoyed is almost over. But not quite, 
for as I return slowly along the streets, the windows 
are open, and only a thin haze of lace or muslin separates 
me from the Paradise within. 


DINNER-TIME 


17 


I see the graceful cluster of girls hovering over the 
piano, and the quiet groups of the elders in easy chairs, 
around little tables. I cannot hear what is said, nor 
plainly see the faces. But some hoyden evening wind, 
more daring than I, abruptly parts the cloud to look 
in, and out comes a gush of light, music, and fragrance, 
so that I shrink away into the dark, that I may not 
seem, even by chance, to have invaded that privacy. 

Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, who does 
not cope with the Italian Prima Donna, nor sing in- 
differently to-night, what was sung superbly last even- 
ing at the opera. She has a strange, low, sweet voice, 
as if she only sang in the twilight. It is the ballad 
of “Allan Percy” that she sings. There is no dainty 
applause of kid gloves, when it is ended, but silence 
follows the singing, like a tear. 

I Then you, my young friend, ascend into the draw- 
ing-room, and, after a little graceful gossip, retire; 
or you wait, possibly, to hand Aurelia into her car- 
riage, and to arrange a waltz for to-morrow evening. 
She smiles, you bow, and it is over. But it is not yet 
over with me. My fancy still follows her, and, like a 
prophetic dream, rehearses her destiny. For, as the 
carriage rolls away into the darkness and I return 
homewards, how can my fancy help rolling away also, 
into the dim future, watching her go down the years ? 

Upon my way home I see her in a thousand new 
situations. My fancy says to me, “The beauty of 
this beautiful woman is heaven’s stamp upon virtue, 
c 


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PRUE AND I 


She will be equal to every chance that shall befall her, 
and she is so radiant and charming in the circle of 
prosperity, only because she has that irresistible sim- 
plicity » and fidelity of character, which can also pluck 
5 the sting from adversity. Do you not see, you wan 
old book-keeper in faded cravat, that in a poor man’s 
house this superb Aurelia would be more stately than 
sculpture, more beautiful than painting, and more 
graceful than the famous vases? Would her husband 
10 regret the opera if she sang ‘ Allan Percy ’ to him in the 
twilight? Would he not feel richer than the Poets, 
when his eyes rose from their jewelled pages, to fall 
again dazzled by the splendour of his wife’s beauty?” 

At this point in my reflections I sometimes run, 
15 rather violently, against a lamp-post, and then pro- 
ceed along the street more sedately. 

It is yet early when I reach home, where my Prue 
awaits me. The children are asleep, and the trousers 
mended. The admirable woman is patient of my 
20 idiosyncrasies, and asks me if I have had a pleasant ! 
walk, and if there were many fine dinners to-day, as I 
if I had been expected at a dozen tables. She even 
asks me if I have seen the beautiful Aurelia (for there 
is always some Aurelia), and inquires what dress she 
25 wore. I respond, and dilate upon what I have seen. 
Prue listens, as the children listen to her fairy tales. 
We discuss the little stories that penetrate our retire- 
ment, of the great people who actually dine out. Prue, 
with fine womanly instinct, declares it is a shame that 


DINNER-TIME 


19 


Aurelia should smile for a moment upon , yes, 

even upon you, my friend of the irreproachable 
manners ! 

“I know him,” says my simple Prue; “I have 
watched his cold courtesy, his insincere devotion. 5 
I have seen him acting in the boxes at the opera, much 
more adroitly than the singers upon the stage. I 
have read his determination to marry Aurelia; and 
I shall not be surprised,” concludes my tender wife, 
sadly, “if he wins her at last, by tiring her out, or, lO 
by secluding her by his constant devotion from the 
homage of other men, convinces her that she had 
better marry him, since it is so dismal to live on un- 
married.” 

And so, my friend, at the moment when the bouquet 15 
you ordered is arriving at Aurelia’s house, and she is 
sitting before the glass while her maid arranges the 
last flower in her hair, my darling Prue, whom you 
will never hear of, is shedding warm tears over your 
probable union, and I am sitting by, adjusting my 20 
cravat and incontinently clearing my throat. 

It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet you 
will smile at it tenderly, rather than scornfully, if you 
remember that it shows how closely linked we human 
creatures are, without knowing it, and that more hearts 25 
than we dream of enjoy our happiness and share our 
sorrow. 

Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, un- 
known, converse with the famous beauties. If Aure- 


20 


PRUE AND I 


lia is at last engaged (but who is worthy?), she will, 
with even greater care, arrange that wondrous toilette, 
will teach that lace a fall more alluring, those gems 
a sweeter light. But even then, as she rolls to dinner 
sin her carriage, glad that she is fair, not for her own 
sake nor for the world’s, but for that of a single youth 
(who, I hope, has not been smoking at the club all the 
morning), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her 
pass, I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can 
10 do no more ; and if, perchance, my garments — which 
must seem quaint to her, with their shining knees and 
carefully brushed elbows; my white cravat, careless, 
yet prim; my meditative movement, as I put my 
stick under my arm to pare an apple, and not, I hope, 
15 this time to fall into the street, — should remind her, 
in her spring of youth, and beauty, and love, that there 
are age, and care, and poverty, also ; then, perhaps, 
the good fortune of the meeting is not wholly mine. 

For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these things, at 
20 least, must come even to you. There will be a time 
when you will no longer go out to dinner, or only very 
quietly, in the family. I shall be gone then : but 
other old book-keepers in white cravats will inherit 
my tastes, and saunter, on summer afternoons, to see 
25 what I loved to see. 

They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to 
look at the old lady in venerable cap, who is rolling by 
in the carriage. They will worship another Aurelia. 
You will not wear diamonds or opals any more, only 


DINNER-TIME 


21 


one pearl upon your blue-veined finger — your en- 
gagement ring. Grave clergymen and antiquated 
beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the group 
of polished youth, who gather around the yet unborn 
Aurelia of that day, will look at you, sitting quietly 5 
upon the sofa, and say, softly, “She must have been 
very handsome in her time.” 

All this must be : for consider how few years since 
it was your grandmother who was the belle, by whose 
side the handsome young men longed to sit and pass 10 
expressive mottoes. Your grandmother was the 
Aurelia of a half-century ago, although you cannot 
fancy her young. She is indissolubly associated in 
your mind with caps and dark dresses. You can be- 
lieve Mary Queen of Scots,® or Nell Gwyn,® or Cleo- 15 
patra,® to have been young and blooming, although 
they belong to old and dead centuries, but not your 
grandmother. Think of those who shall believe the 
same of you — you, who to-day are the very flower 
of youth. 20 

Might I plead with you, x\urelia — I, who would 
be too happy to receive one of those graciously beam- 
ing bows that I see you bestow upon young men, in 
passing, — I would ask you to bear that thought with 
you, always, not to sadden your sunny smile, but 25 
to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in your sum- 
mer garland this little leaf of rue. It will not be 
the skull at the feast, it will rather be the tender 
thoughtfulness in the face of the young Madonna. 


I 


22 PRUE AND I 

For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia, 
and the children of yesterday are the wives and mothers 
of to-day. Even I do sometimes discover the mild 
eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my face, as if 
5 searching for the bloom which she remembers there 
in the days, long ago, when we were young. She 
will never see it there again, any more than the flowers 
she held in her hand, in our old spring rambles. Yet 
the tear that slowly gathers as she gazes, is not grief 
10 that the bloom has faded from my cheek, but the sweet 
consciousness that it can never fade from my heart; 
and as her eyes fall upon her work again, or the children 
climb her lap to hear the old fairy tales they already 
know by heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than the 
15 sweetheart of those days long ago. 


MY CHATEAUX 


“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree.” 

Coleridge. 

I AM the owner of great estates. Many of them lie 
in the West ; but the greater part are in Spain. You 
may see my western possessions any evening at sun- 
set when their spires and battlements flash against 
the horizon. 

It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, 
as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at 
least, from any part of the world in which I chance 
to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good 
Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when 
I was a boy and a supercargo°), if I fell home-sick, 
or sank into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I had 
left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and then 
looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering 
pinnacles and towers brightly burnished as if to salute 
and welcome me. 

So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and can- 
not And my wonted solace in sallying forth at dinner- 
time to contemplate the gay world of youth and beauty 
hurrying to the congress of fashion, — or if I observe 
23 


5 

10 

15 

20 


24 


PRUE AND I 


that years are deepening their tracks around the eyes 
of my wife, Prue, I go quietly up to the housetop, 
toward evening, and refresh myself with a distant 
prospect of my estates. It is as dear to me as that of 
5 Eton® to the poet Gray,® and, if I sometimes wonder 
at such moments whether I shall find those realms as 
fair as they appear, I am suddenly reminded that the 
night air may be noxious, and descending, I enter the 
little parlour where Prue sits stitching, and surprise 
10 that precious woman by exclaiming with the poet’s 
pensive enthusiasm ; 

“Thought would destroy their Paradise,® 

No more ; — where ignorance is bliss, 

’Tis folly to be wise.” 

15 Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and 
as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my voice 
quivers when I come to the point in which it is re- 
lated that sweet odours of the land mingled with the 
sea-air, as the admiral’s fleet approached the shores ; 
20 that tropical birds flew out and fluttered around the 
ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous promises 
of the new country ; that boughs, perhaps with blos- 
soms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the 
strange wood from which the craft were hollowed. 
25 Then I cannot restrain myself. I think of the gor- 
geous visions I have seen before I have even under- 
taken the journey to the West, and I cry aloud to 
Prue ; 


MY CHATEAUX 


25 


^^What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms, 
and celestial odours will float out to us, my Prue, as 
we approach our western possessions !” 

The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a re- 
proof so delicate that it could not be trusted to words ; 
and, after a moment, she resumes her knitting and I 
proceed. 

These are my western estates, but my finest castles 
are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, 
and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and 
appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. 
I have never been to Spain myself, but I have natu- 
rally conversed much with travellers to that country ; 
although, I must allow, without deriving from them 
much substantial information about my property 
there. The wisest of them told me that there were 
more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other 
region he had ever heard of, and they are all great 
proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude 
of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them 
you easily gather that each one considers his own 
castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions. 
And, after I had heard this said, I verified it, by dis- 
covering that all my immediate neighbours in the city 
were great Spanish proprietors. 

One day as I raised my head from entering some 
long and tedious accounts in my books, and began 
to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that f 
must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


26 


PRUE AND I 


my subordinate, in office but not in years (for poor 
old Titbottom will never see sixty again !), leaning on 
his hand, and much abstracted. 

“ Are you not well, Titbottom ?” asked 1. 

5 '‘Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in 
Spain,” said he. 

I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad 
eye, and white hair, for a moment, in great surprise, 
and then inquired : 

10 “ Is it possible that you own property there too ?” 

He shook his head silently; and still leaning on 
his hand, and with an expression in his eye, as if he 
were looking upon the most fertile estate of Anda- 
lusia, he went on making his plans ; laying out his 
15 gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines, 
determining a library with a southern exposure, and 
resolving which should be the tapestried chamber. 

“What a singular whim,” thought I, as I watched 
Titbottom and filled up a cheque for four hundred 
20 dollars, my quarterly salary, “that a man who owns 
castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at nine 
hundred dollars a year !” 

When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and 
afterward sat for a long time upon the roof of the 
25 house, looking at my western property, and thinking 
of Titbottom. 

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have 
ever been to Spain to take possession and report to 
the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of 


MY CHATEAUX 


27 


j course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is 
Titbottom. And I find it is the case with all the pro- 
! prietors. We have so much to detain us at home that 
we cannot get away. But it is always so with rich 
men. Prue sighed once as she sat at the window and 5 
saw Bourne, the millionaire, the President of innumer- 
j able companies, and manager and director of all the 
charitable societies in town, going by with wrinkled 
brow and hurried step. I asked her why she sighed. 

‘‘ Because I was remembering that my mother used 10 
to tell me not to desire great riches, for they occa- 
sioned great cares,” said she. 

^‘They do indeed,” answered I, with emphasis, re- 
membering Titbottom, and the impossibility of look- 
ing after my Spanish estates. 15 

Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise; 
but I saw that her mind had gone down the street 
with Bourne. I could never discover if he held much 
Spanish stock. But I think he does. All the Spanish 
proprietors have a certain expression. Bourne has 20 
it to a remarkable degree. It is a kind of look, as if, 
in fact, a man’s mind were in Spain. Bourne was 
an old lover of Prue’s, and he is not married, which is 
strange for a man in his position. 

It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, 25 
as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The 
sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty 
and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little 
hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer. 


28 


PRUE AND I 


but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. 
All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and 
soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found 
in the grounds. They command a noble view of the 
5 Alps ; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content 
with the prospect of them from the highest tower of 
my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland. 

The neighbouring ruins, too, are as picturesque as 
those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the Coli- 
I0seum,° and of seeing the shattered arches of the Aque- 
ducts stretching along the Campagna° and melting 
into the Alban Mount,° is entirely quenched. The I 
rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit as ! 
brilliant of complexion and exquisite of flavour as j 
15 any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento® girls, looking over 
the high plastered walls of southern Italy, hand to 
the youthful travellers, climbing on donkeys up the 
narrow lane beneath. 

The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert 
20 lies upon their edge, and Damascus® stands in my 
garden. I am given to understand, also, that the 
Parthenon® has been removed to my Spanish posses- 
sions. The Golden-Horn® is my fish-preserve ; my 
flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of 
25 Marathon,® and the honey of Hymettus® is distilled 
from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna® — all 
in my Spanish domains. 

From the windows of those castles look the beauti- 
ful women whom I have never seen, whose portraits 


MY CHATEAUX 


29 


the poets have painted. They wait for me there, and 
chiefly the fair-haired cliild, lost to my eyes so long 
ago, now bloomed into an impossible beauty. The 
lights that never shone, glance at evening in the vaulted 
halls, upon banquets that were never spread. The 5 
bands I have never collected, play all night long, and 
enchant the brilliant company, that was never as- 
sembled, into silence. 

In the long summer mornings the children that I 
never had, play in the gardens that I never planted. 10 
I hear their sweet voices sounding low and far away, 
calling, “Father! father!” I see the lost fair-haired 
girl, grown now into a woman, descending the stately 
stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping out upon the 
lawn, and playing with those children. They bound 15 
away together down the garden; but those voices 
linger, this time airily calling, “Mother! mother!” 

But there is a stranger magic than this in my Span- 
ish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when a child, 

I played, in my father’s old country place, which was 20 
sold when he failed, are all there, and not a flower 
faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The green leaves are 
not fallen from the spring woods of half a century ago, 
and a gorgeous autumn has blazed undimmed for fifty 
years, among the trees I remember. 25 

Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate 
now, but those with which I used to prick my fingers 
when gathering them in New Hampshire woods are 
exquisite as ever to my taste, when I think of eating 


30 


PRUE AND I 


them in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home ; 
but in Spain, when I think of it, I bound over all the 
fences in the country, barebacked upon the wildest 
horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific in 
5 this country ; but in Spain I should listen as rever- 
ently as ever, for proprietors must set a good example 
on their estates. 

Plays are insufferable to me here — Prue and I never 
go. Prue, indeed, is not quite sure it is moral ; but 
10 the theatres in my Spanish castles are of a prodigious 
splendour, and when I think of going there, Prue 
sits in a front box with me — a kind of royal box — 
the good woman, attired in such wise as I have never 
seen her here, while I wear my white waistcoat, which 
15 in Spain has no appearance of mending, but dazzles 
with immortal newness, and is a miraculous fit. 

Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the 
placid, breeches-patching helpmate, with whom you 
are acquainted, but her face has a bloom which we 
20 both remember, and her movement a grace which my 
Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a music sweeter 
than those that orchestras discourse. She is always 
there what she seemed to me when I fell in love with 
her, many and many years ago. The neighbours 
25 called her then a nice, capable girl ; and certainly she 
did knit and darn with a zeal and success to which my 
feet and my legs have testified for nearly half a cen- 
tury. But she could spin a finer web than ever came 
from cotton, and in its subtle meshes my heart was 


MY CHATEAUX 


31 


entangled, and there has reposed softly and happily 
ever since. The neighbours declared she could make 
pudding and cake better than any girl of her age ; but 
stale bread from Prue’s hand was ambrosia® to my 
palate. 5 

“She who makes everything well, even to making 
neighbours speak well of her, will surely make a good 
wife,” said I to myself when I knew her ; and the echo 
of a half century answers, “ a good wife.” 

So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see Prue 10 
in them as my heart saw her standing by her father’s 
door. “Age cannot wither her.” There is a magic in 
the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides by, 
unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, 
which I see so distinctly from my Spanish windows ; 16 
I delight in the taste of the southern fruit that ripens 
upon my terraces ; I enjoy the pensive shade of the 
Italian ruins in my gardens ; I like to shoot croco- 
diles, and talk with the Sphinx upon the shores of 
the Nile, flowing through my domain ; I am glad to 20 
drink sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my flocks on 
the plains of Marathon ; but I would resign all these 
for ever rather than part with that Spanish portrait of 
Prue for a day. Nay, have I not resigned them all for 
ever, to live with that portrait’s changing original ? 26 

I have often wondered how I should reach my 
castles. The desire of going comes over me very 
strongly sometimes, and I endeavour to see how I 
can arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell 


32 


PRUE AND I 


the truth, I am not quite sure of the route — I mean, 
to that particular part of Spain in which my estates 
lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody ; 
seems to know precisely. One morning I met young 
5 Aspen, trembling with excitement. 

“What’s the matter?” asked I with interest, for I 
knew that he held a great deal of Spanish stock. I 

“Oh!” said he, “I’m going out to take possession, jii 
I have found the way to my castles in Spain.” 1| 

10 “Dear me!” I answered, with the blood stream- 1 
ing into my face ; and, heedless of Prue, pulling my 
glove until it ripped — “ what is it ? ” | 

“ The direct route is through California,” answered [ 
he. 

15 “ But then you have the sea to cross afterward,” i 

said I, remembering the map. 

“Not at all,” answered Aspen, “the road runs along \ 
the shore of the Sacramento River.” 

He darted away from me, and I did not meet him ! 
20 again. I was very curious to know if he arrived t 
safely in Spain, and was expecting every day to hear 
news from him of my property there, when, one even- 
ing, I bought an extra, full of California news, and 
the first thing upon which my eye fell was this : “ Died, 
25 in San Francisco, Edward Aspen, Esq., aged 35.” 
There is a large body of the Spanish stock-holders 
who believe with Aspen, and sail for California every 
week. I have not yet heard of their arrival out at 
their castles, but I suppose they are so busy with their 


MY CHATEAUX 


33 


own affairs there, that they have no time to write to 
the rest of us about the condition of our property. 

There was my wife’s cousin, too, Jonathan Bud, 
who is a good, honest youth from the country, and, 
after a few weeks’ absence, he burst into the office 5 
one day, just as I was balancing my books, and whis- 
pered to me, eagerly : 

“ I’ve found my castle in Spain.” 

I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately, 
for I was wiser now than when Aspen had excited me, 10 
and looked at my wife’s cousin, Jonathan Bud, in- 
quiringly. 

“Polly Bacon,” whispered he, winking. 

I continued the interrogative glance. 

“ She’s going to marry me, and she’ll show me the 16 
way to Spain,” said Jonathan Bud, hilariously. 

“She’ll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud,” 
said I. 

And so she does. He makes no more hilarious re- 
marks. He never bursts into a room. He does not 20 
ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does not 
like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies. She 
has a way of saying, “Mr. Bud!” which destroys 
conversation, and casts a gloom upon society. 

It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire, 25 
must have ascertained the safest and most expedi- 
tious route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one 
afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting 
at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files 

D 


34 


PRUE AND I 


\ 


of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes, everything 
that covers the tables of a great merchant. In the 
outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high shelves 
over their heads, were huge chests, covered with dust, 
5 dingy with age, many of them, and all marked with 
the name of the firm, in large black letters — Bourne 
and Dye.” They were all numbered also with the 
proper year; some of them with a single capital B, 
and dates extending back into the last century, when 
10 old Bourne made the great fortune, before he went into 
partnership with Dye. Everything was indicative of) 
immense and increasing prosperity. 

There were several gentlemen in waiting to con- 
verse with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly, 
15 down town), and I waited until they went out. But 
others came in. There was no pause in the rush. 
All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At 
length I stepped up. 

“ A moment, please, Mr. Bourne.” 

20 He looked up hastily, wished me good morning, 
which he had done to none of the others, and which 
courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy. 

“What is it, sir?” he asked, blandly, but with 
wrinkled brow. 

25 “Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?” 
said I, without preface. 

He looked at me for a few moments without speak- 
ing, and without seeming to see me. His brow grad- 
ually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently looking into 


MY CHATEAUX 


35 


the street, were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon 
the Spanish landscape. 

“Too many, too many,” said he at length, musingly, 
shaking his head, and without addressing me. 

I suppose he felt himself too much extended — as 5 
we say in Wall Street. He feared, I thought, that he 
had too much impracticable property elsewhere, to 
own so much in Spain ; so I asked, 

“Will you tell me what you consider the shortest 
and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne ? for, of course, 10 
a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts 
of the world, will know all that I have come to inquire.” 

“My dear sir,” answered he wearily, “I have been 
trying all my life to discover it ; but none of my ships 
have ever been there — none of my captains have any 15 
report to make. They bring me, as they brought my 
father, gold dust from Guinea;® ivory, pearls, and 
precious stones, from every part of the earth; but 
not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles 
in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers 20 
of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and in- 
valids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but 
none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except 
one young poet, and he died in a mad-house.” 

“ Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety- 25 
seven?” hastily demanded a man, whom, as he en- 
tered, I recognized as a broker. “We’ll make a splen- 
did thing of it.” 

Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared. 


36 


PRUE AND I 


“Happy man!” muttered the merchant, as the} 
broker went out; “he has no castles in Spain.” 

“I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne,” 
said I, retiring. 

5 “I am glad you came,” returned he ; “ but I assure 
you, had I known the route you hoped to ascertain 
from me, I should have sailed years and years ago. 
People sail for the North-west Passage,® which is 
nothing when you have found it. Why don’t the 
10 English Admiralty fit out expeditions to discover all 
our castles in Spain ? ” , 

He sat lost in thought. 

“ It’s nearly post-time, sir,” said the clerk. 

Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still mus- I 
15 ing ; and I turned to go, wishing him good morning. , 
When I had nearly reached the door, he called me back, 
saying, as if continuing his remarks — 

“It is strange that you, of all men, should come to 
ask me this question. If I envy any man, it is you, i 
20 for I sincerely assure you that I supposed you lived 
altogether upon your Spanish estates. I once thought 
I knew the way to mine. I gave directions for fur- 
nishing them, and ordered bridal bouquets, which 
were never used, but I suppose they are there still.” 

25 He paused a moment, then said slowly — “ How is 
your wife?” 

I told him that Prue was well — that she was always 
remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook me warmly by 
the hand. 


MY CHATEAUX 


37 


“Thank you,” said he. “Good morning.” 

I knew why he thanked me ; I knew why he thought 
that I lived altogether upon my Spanish estates ; I 
knew a little bit about those bridal bouquets. Mr. 
Bourne, the millionaire, was an old lover of Prue’s. 5 
There is something very odd about these Spanish 
castles. When I think of them, I somehow see the 
fair-haired giri whom I knew when I was not out of 
short jackets. When Bourne meditates them, he sees 
Prue and me quietly at home in their best chambers. 10 
It is a very singular thing that my wife should live in 
another man’s castle in Spain. 

At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had 
ever heard of the best route to our estates. He said 
that he owned castles, and sometimes there was an 15 
expression in his face, as if he saw them. I hope he 
did. I should long ago have asked him if he had 
ever observed the turrets of my possessions in the 
West, without alluding to Spain, if I had not feared 
he would suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope 20 
his poverty has not turned his head, for he is very 
forlorn. 

One Sunday I went with him a few miles into the 
country. It was a soft, bright day, the fields and hills 
lay turned to the sky, as if every leaf and blade of 25 
grass were nerves, bared to the touch of the sun. I 
almost felt the ground warm under my feet. The 
meadows waved and glittered, the lights and shadows 
were exquisite, and the distant hills seemed only to 


38 


PRUE AND I 


remove the horizon farther away. As we strolled 
along, picking wild flowers, for it was in summer, I was 
thinking what a fine day it was for a trip to Spain, 
when Titbottom suddenly exclaimed : 

5 “Thank God! I own this landscape.” 

“You ?” returned I. 

“ Certainly,” said he. 

“Why,” I answered, “I thought this was part of 
Bourne’s property?” 

10 Titbottom smiled. 

“ Does Bourne own the sun and sky ? Does Bourne 
own that sailing shadow yonder? Does Bourne own 
the golden lustre of the grain, or the motion of the 
wood, or those ghosts of hills, that glide pallid along 
15 the horizon ? Bourne owns the dirt and fences ; I 
own the beauty that makes the landscape, or other- 
wise how could I own castles in Spain ?” 

That was very true. I respected Titbottom more 
than ever. 

20 “Do you know,” said he, after a long pause, “that 
I fancy my castles lie just beyond those distant hills. 
At all events, I can see them distinctly from their 
summits.” 

He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I 
26 asked : 

“But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the 
way to them?” 

“Dear me! yes,” answered he, “I know the way 
well enough; but it would do no good to follow it. 


MY CHATEAUX 


39 


I should give out before I arrived. It is a long and 
difficult journey for a man of my years and habits — 
and income,” he added slowly. 

As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground; 
and while he pulled long blades of grass, and, putting 5 
them between his thumbs, whistled shrilly, he said : 

“I have never known but two men who reached 
their estates in Spain.” 

“Indeed!” said I, “how did they go?” 

“ One went over the side of a ship, and the other 10 
out of a third story window,” said Titbottom, fitting 
a broad blade between his thumbs and blowing a 
demoniacal blast. 

“And I know one proprietor who resides upon his 
^estates constantly,” continued he. 15 

“Who is that?” 

“Our old friend. Slug, whom you may see any day 
at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or going 
to call upon his friend the Grand Lama,° or dressing 
for the wedding of the Man in the Moon,° or receiving 20 
an ambassador from Timbuctoo.° Whenever I go to 
see him. Slug insists that I am the Pope, disguised 
as a journeyitian carpenter, and he entertains me in 
the most distinguished manner. He always insists 
upon kissing my foot, and I bestow upon him, kneel- 25 
ing, the apostolic benediction. This is the only Span- 
ish proprietor in possession, with whom I am ac- 
quainted.” 

And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the ground. 


40 


PRUE AND I 


and making a spy-glass of his hand, surveyed the land- 
scape through it. This was a marvellous book-keeper 
of more than sixty ! 

“I know another man who lived in his Spanish | 
6 castle for two months, and then was tumbled out head 
first. That was young Stunning, who married old 
Buhl’s daughter. She was all smiles, and mamma was 
all sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for two months, j 
He carried his head in the clouds, and felicity abso- i 
10 lutely foamed at his eyes. He was drowned in love ; t 
seeing, as usual, not what really was, but what he ' 
fancied. He lived so exclusively in his castle, that 
he forgot the office down town, and one morning there 
came a fall, and Stunning was smashed.” 

15 Titbottom arose, and stooping over, contemplated 
the landscape, with his head down between his legs. 

“It’s quite a new effect, so,” said the nimble book- 
keeper. 

“Well,” said I, “Stunning failed?” 

20 “Oh yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain 
came down about his ears with a tremendous crash. 
The family sugar was all dissolved into the original 
cane in a rnoment. Fairy-times are over, are they? 
Heigh-ho ! the falling stones of Stunning’s castle 
25 have left their marks all over his face. I call them 
his Spanish scars.” 

“But, my dear Titbottom,” said I, “what is the 
matter with you this morning, your usual sedateness 
is quite gone?” 


MY CHATEAUX 


41 


“It’s only the exhilarating air of Spain,” he an- 
swered. “ My castles are so beautiful that I can never 
think of them, nor speak of them, without excite- 
ment; when I was younger I desired to reach them 
even more ardently than now, because I heard that 5 
the philosopher’s stone was in the vault of one of them.” 

“Indeed,” said I, yielding to sympathy, “and I 
have good reason to believe that the fountain of eternal 
youth flows through the garden of one of mine. Do 
you know whether there are any children upon your 10 
grounds?” 

“The children of Alice call Bartrum father!”® re- 
plied Titbottom, solemnly, and in a low voice, as he 
folded his faded hands before him, and stood erect, 
looking wistfully over the landscape. The light wind 15 
played with his thin white hair, and his sober, black 
suit was almost sombre in the sunshine. The half 
bitter expression, which I had remarked upon his face 
during part of our conversation, had passed away, 
and the old sadness had returned to his eye. He stood, 20 
in the pleasant morning, the very image of a great 
proprietor of castles in Spain. 

“There is wonderful music there,” he said : “some- 
times I awake at night, and hear it. It is full of the 
sweetness of youth, and love, and a new world. I 25 
lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the great gates 
of my estates. They swing open upon noiseless hinges, 
and the tropic of my dreams receives me. Up the 
broad steps, whose marble pavement mingled light 


42 


PRUE AND I 


and shadow print with shifting mosaic, beneath the 
boughs of lustrous oleanders, and palms, and trees 
of unimaginable fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, 
warm with summer odours, and into the presence- 
5 chamber beyond, where my wife awaits me. But 
castle, and wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and 
statues, and all the bright substance of my household, 
seem to reel and glimmer in the splendour, as the music 
fails. 

10 “But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to my 
heart, and we move on with a fair society, beautiful 
women, noble men, before whom the tropical luxuri- 
ance of that world bends and bows in homage ; and, 
through endless days and nights of eternal summer, 

16 the stately revel of our life proceeds. Then, sud- 
denly, the music stops. I hear my watch ticking 
under the pillow. I see dimly the outline of my little 
upper room. Then I fall asleep, and in the morning 
some one of the boarders at the breakfast-table says : 
20 “‘Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Tit- 
bottom?’” I 

I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very ' 
extensive proprietor. The truth is, that he was so 
constantly engaged in planning and arranging his 
26 castles, that he conversed very little at the office, and 
I had misinterpreted his silence. As we walked home- 
ward, that day, he was more than ever tender and 
gentle. “We must all have something to do in this 
world,” said he, “ and I, who have so much leisure — 


MY CHATEAUX 


43 


for you know I have no wife nor children to work for — 
know not what I should do, if I had not my castles in 
Spain to look after.” 

When I reached home, my darling Prue was sit- 
ting in the small parlour, reading. I felt a little guilty 
for having been so long away, and upon my only holi- 
day, too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited 
me to go to walk, and that I had no idea we had gone 
so far, and that 

“Don’t excuse yourself,” said Prue, smiling as she 
laid down her book; “I am glad you have enjoyed 
yourself. You ought to go out sometimes, and breathe 
the fresh air, and run about the fields, which I am not 
strong enough to do. Why did you not bring home Mr. 
Titbottom to tea? He is so lonely, and looks so sad. 
I am sure he has very little comfort in this life,” said my 
thoughtful Prue, as she called Jane to set the tea-table. 

“But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain, Prue,” 
answered I. 

“When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain?” inquired 
my wife. 

“Why, he is there more than half the time,” I replied. 

Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. “I see it 
has done you good to breathe the country air,” said 
she. “Jane, get some of the blackberry jam, and call 
Adoniram and the children.” 

So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlour, 
for our little house and limited means do not allow us 
to have things upon the Spanish scale. It is better 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


44 


PRUE AND I 


than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the chil- 
dren; and when she speaks to me it seems sweeter j 
than psalm singing; at least, such as we have in our 
church. I am very happy. | 

6 Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles 
in Spain. I have so much property there, that I could j 
* not, in conscience, neglect it. All the years of myj 
youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are stored away, j 
like precious stones, in the vaults ; and I know that I 
10 1 shall find everything convenient, elegant, and beauti- 1 
ful, when I come into possession. 

As the years go by, I am not conscious that my 
interest diminishes. If I see that age is subtly sifting 
his snow in the dark hair of my Prue, I smile, con- 
16 tented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I first 
saw it, is all carefully treasured in my castles in Spain. 
If I feel her arm more heavily leaning upon mine, as 
we walk around the squares, I press it closely to my 
side, for I know that the easy grace of her youth’s 
20 motion will be restored by the elixir of that Spanish 
air. If her voice sometimes falls less clearly from 
her lips, it is no less sweet to me, for the music of her 
voice’s prime fills, freshly as ever, those Spanish halls. 
If the light I love fades a little from her eyes, I know 
25 that the glances she gave me, in our youth, are the 
eternal sunshine of my castles in Spain. 

I defy time and change. Each year laid upon our 
heads is a hand of blessing. I have no doubt that 
I shall find the shortest route to my possessions as 


MY CHATEAUX , 


45 


soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is mar- 
ried, we shall all go out to one of my castles to pass 
the honeymoon. 

Ah ! if the true history of Spain could be written, 
what a book were there ! The most purely romantic 5 
ruin in the world is the Alhambra.® But of the Span- 
ish castles, more spacious and splendid than any pos- 
sible Alhambra, and for ever unruined, no towers are 
visible, no pictures have been painted, and only a few 
ecstatic songs have been sung. The pleasure-dome of 10 
Kubla Khan,® which Coleridge saw in Xanadu (a 
province with which I am not familiar), and a fine 
Castle of Indolence® belonging to Thomson, and the 
Palace of art which Tennyson built as a “ lordly pleas- 
ure-house”® for his soul, are among the best statistical 16 
accounts of those Spanish estates. Turner, too, has 
done for them much the same service that Owen Jones® 
has done for the Alhambra. In the vignette to Moore’s 
Epicurean^ you will find represented one of the most 
extensive castles in Spain; and there are several £0 
exquisite studies from others, by the same artists, pub- 
lished in Rogers’ Italy.® 

But I confess I do not recognize any of these as 
mine, and that fact makes me prouder of my own 
castles, for, if there be such boundless variety of mag- 26 
nificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine the life 
that is led there, a life not unworthy such a setting. 

If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable 
time,' and we should make up that little family party 


46 


PRUE AND 1 


to go out, I have considered already what society I 
should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah’s daughter° 
and the Chevalier Bayard,® I should say — and fair 
Rosamond® with Dean Swift® — King Solomon and the 
5 Queen of Sheba would come over, I think, from his 
famous castle — Shakespeare and his friend the Mar- 
quis of Southampton® might come in a galley with 
Cleopatra; and, if any guest were offended by her 
presence, he should devote himself to the Fair One 
10 with Golden Locks. Mephistopheles® is not person- 
ally disagreeable, and is exceedingly well-bred in 
society, I am told ; and he should come tete-a-tete 
with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley.® Spenser should escort 
his Faerie Queen,® who would preside at the tea- 
15 table. 

Mr. Samuel Weller® I should ask as Lord of Mis- 
rule,® and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason.® I 
would suggest to Major Dobbin® to accompany Mrs. 
Fry;® Alcibiades® would bring Homer® and Plato® in 
2(^his purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia,® 
Ninon de TEnclos,® and Mrs. Battle,® to make up a 
table of whist with Queen Elizabeth.® I shall order 
a seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey® and 
Joan of Arc.® I shall invite General Washington to 
25 bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation 
for Sir Walter Raleigh;® and Chaucer,® Browning,® 
and Walter Savage Landor,® should talk with Goethe,® 
who is to bring Tasso° on one arm and Iphigenia® on 
the other. 


MY CHATEAUX 


47 


Dante° and Mr. Carlyle® would prefer, I suppose, 
to go down into the dark vaults under the castle. The 
Man in the Moon, the Old Harry,® and William of the 
Wisp would be valuable additions, and the Laureate 
Tennyson® might compose an official ode upon the 
occasion : or I would ask “ They”® to say all about it. 

Of course there are many other guests whose names 
I do not at the moment recall. But I should invite, 
first of all. Miles Coverdale,® who knows everything 
about these places and this society, for he was at 
Blithedale,® and he has described “a select party” 
which he attended at a castle in the air. 

Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact I 
am not quite sure that she knows my intention. For 
I wish to surprise her, and I think it would be gener- 
ous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal quadrille. 
I think that I shall try the first waltz with the girl I 
sometimes seem to see in my fairest castle, but whom 
I very vaguely remember. Titbottom will come' with 
old Burton® and Jaques.® But I have not prepared 
half my invitations. Do you not guess it, seeing that 
I did not name, first of all, Elia, who assisted at the 
Rejoicings upon the new year’s coming of age” ?® 

And yet, if Adoniram should never marry ? — or if 
we could not get to Spain ? — or if the company would 
not come ? 

What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have al- 
ready entertained this party in my humble little parlour 
at home ; and Prue presided as serenely as Semiramis® 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


48 


PRUE AND I 


over her court. Have I not said that I defy time, and 
shall space hope to daunt me? I keep books by day, 
but by night books keep me. They leave me to dreams 
and reveries. Shall I confess, that sometimes when I 
shave been sitting, reading to my Prue, Cymbeline,° 
perhaps, or a Canterbury tale,° I have seemed to see 
clearly before me the broad highway to my castles in 
Spain ; and as she looked up from her work, and smiled 
in sympathy, I have even fancied that I was already 
10 there. 


SEA FROM SHORE 


“Come unto these yellow sands.”® 

The Tempest. 

“Argosies of magic sails. 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 
hales.”® Tennyson. 

In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk upon 
the Battery toward sunset, and watch the steamers, 
crowded with passengers, bound for the pleasant 
places along the coast where people pass the hot 
months. Sea-side lodgings are not very comfortable, 5 
I am told; but who would not be a little pinched in 
his chamber, if his windows looked upon the sea? 

In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at such 
times, and so respectfully do I regard the sailors 
who may chance to pass, that Prue often says, with lo 
her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of Green- 
wich Hospital,® full of abortive marine hopes and 
wishes, broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and 
desires, whose hands have been shot away in some 
hard battle of experience, so that they cannot grasp 15 
the results towards which they reach. 

She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions 
do lie, ruined and hopeless now, strewn about the 
E 49 


50 


PRUE AND I 


placid contentment of my mental life, as the old 
pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich, 
maimed and musing in the quiet morning sunshine. 
Many a one among them thinks what a Nelson he 
5 would have been if both his legs had not been pre- 
maturely carried away; or in what a Trafalgar® of 
triumph he would have ended, if, unfortunately, he 
had not happened to have been blown blind oy the 
explosion of that unlucky magazine. 

10 So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar, 
stiff with gold lace, around my neck, instead of this 
limp white cravat; and I have even brandished my 
quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom has 
paused in his additions and looked at me as if he 
15 doubted whether I should come out quite square in | 
my petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom 
was born in Nantucket. 

That is the secret of my fondness for the sea; I 
was born by it. Not more surely do Savoyards® 
20 pine for the mountains, or Cockneys® for the sound 
of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight 
and sound of the ocean to return to \t and renew 
their fealty. In dreams the children of the sea hear 
its voice. 

25 I have read in some book of travels that certain 
tribes of Arabs have no name for the ocean, and 
that when they came to the shore for the first time, 
they asked with eager sadness, as if penetrated by 
the conviction of a superior beauty, “What is that 


SEA FROM SHORE 


51 


desert of water more beautiful than the land?” And 
in the translations of German stories which Adoniram 
and the other children read, and into which I occa- 
sionally look in the evening when they are gone to 
bed — for I like to know what interests my children 5 
— I find that the Germans, who do not live near the 
sea, love the fairy lore of water, and tell the sweet 
stories of Undine® and Melusina,® as if they had 
especial charm for them, because their country is 
inland. lO 

We who know the sea have less fairy feeling about 
it, but our realities are romance. My earliest remem- 
brances are of a long range of old, half dilapidated 
stores ; red brick stores with steep wooden roofs, and 
stone window-frames and door-frames, which stood 15 
upon docks built as if for immense trade with all 
quarters of the globe. 

Generally there were only a few sloops moored to 
the tremendous posts, which I fancied could easily 
hold fast a Spanish Armada® in a tropical hurricane. 20 
But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with 
rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came 
slowly moving up the harbour, with an air of indo- 
lent self-importance and consciousness of superiority, 
which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship 26 
had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, 
or any specimen of smaller c.raft, I should only have 
wondered at the temerity of any floating thing in 
crossing the path of such supreme majesty. The 


52 


PRUE AND I 


ship was leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, 
and then came the disembowelling. 

How the stately monster had been fattening upon 
foreign spoils! How it had gorged itself (such gal- 
5 Icons did never seem to me of the feminine gender) 
with the luscious treasures of the tropics I It had 
lain its lazy length along the shores of China, and 
sucked in whole flowery harvests of tea. The 
Brazilian sun flashed through the strong wicker ‘ 
10 prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits : 
that eschew the temperate zone. Steams of cam- 
phor, of sandal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors 
chanting cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a 
shrill and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising 
15 and falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that 
lifted the bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung 
them ashore. 

But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised [: 
the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar® ' 
20 and Ceylon® appeared at the mystic bidding of the j 
song. The placid sunshine of the docks was per- • 
fumed with India. The universal calm of southern j 
seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the 
quiet, decaying old northern port. 

25 Long after the confusion of unloading was over, 
and the ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I dared 
to creep timorously along the edge of the dock, and 
at great risk of falling in the black water of its huge 
shadow, I placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and 


SEA FROM SHORE 


53 


SO established a mystic and exquisite connection with 
Pacific islands, with palm groves and all the passion- 
ate beauties they embower : with jungles, Bengal 
tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. 

I touched Asia, the Cape of Good Hope and the 5 
Happy Islands.® I would not believe that the heat I 
felt was of our northern sun ; to my finer sympathy 
it burned with equatorial fervours. 

The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe 
that many of them remain, but they have lost their lo 
character. When I knew them, not only was I 
younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town ; 
at least the bulk of its India trade had shifted to New 
York and Boston. But the appliances remained. 
There was no throng of busy traffickers, and after 15 
school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and gazed into 
the solemn interiors. 

Silence reigned within, — silence, dimness, and piles 
of foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame 
boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with large 20 
stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen 
trousers, who sat looking out of the door toward the 
ships, with little other sign of life than an occasional 
low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge hogsheads 
perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow molasses, 25 
as if nothing tropical could keep within bounds, but 
must continually expand, and exude, and overflow, 
stood against the walls, and had an architectural 
significance, for they darkly reminded me of Egyptian 


54 


PRUE AND / 


prints, and in the duskiness of the low vaulted store 
seemed cyclopean columns incomplete. Strange fes- 
toons and heaps of bags, square piles of square boxes 
cased in mats, bales of airy summer stuffs, which, 
Seven in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by 
audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen 
boxes of precious dyes that even now shine through 
my memory, like old Venetian schools unpainted, — 
these were all there in rich confusion. 

10 The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was 
spicy with mingled odours. I liked to look suddenly 
in from the glare of sunlight outside, and then the 
cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of 
the far off island-groves ; and if only some parrot or 
15 macaw hung within, would flaunt with glistening 
plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue flashed in 
a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if 
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from 
out that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was 
20 complete, and without moving, I was circumnavigat- 
ing the globe. 

From the old stores and the docks slowly crum- 
bling, touched, I know not why or how, by the 
pensive air of -past prosperity, I rambled out of town 
26 on those well-remembered afternoons, to the fields 
that lay upon hillsides over the harbour, and there 
sat, looking out to sea, fancying some distant sail 
proceeding to the glorious ends of the earth, to be 
my type and image, who would so sail, stately and 


SEA FROM SHORE 


55 


successful, to all the glorious ports of the Future. 

' Going home, I returned by the stores, which black 
porters were closing. But I stood long looking in, 
saturating my imagination, and as it appeared, my 
clothes, with the spicy suggestion. For when I 
reached home my thrifty mother — another Prue — 
came snuffing and smelling about me. 

“Why! my son {snuff, snuff), where have you 
been? {snuff, snuff). Has the baker been making 
{snuff) ginger-bread? You smell as if you’d been in 
{snuff, snuff ) a bag of cinnamon.” 

“Fve only been on the wharves, mother.” 

“Well, my dear, I hope you haven’t stuck up your 
clothes with molasses. Wharves are dirty places, 
and dangerous. You must take care of yourself, my 
son. Really this smell is {snuff, snuff) very strong.” 

But I departed from 4:he maternal presence, proud 
and happy. I was aromatic. I bore about me the 
true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt distant 
countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and 
cloves, without- the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself 
with being the representative of the Indies. I was in 
good odour with myself and all the world. 

I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes 
kindly provision. An imagination so easily excited 
as mine could not have escaped disappointment if 
it had had ample opportunity and experience of the 
lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I made 
the India voyage, I have never been a traveller, and 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


56 


PRUE AND I 


saving the little time I was ashore in India, I did not 
lose the sense of novelty and romance, which the first 
sight of foreign lands inspires. 

That little time was all my foreign travel. I am 
6 glad of it. I see now that I should never have found 
the country from which the East Indiaman of my early 
days arrived. The palm groves do not grow with which 
that hand laid upon the ship placed me in magic 
conception. As for the lovely Indian maid whom 
10 the palmy arches bowered, she has long since clasped 
some native lover to her bosom, and, ripened into 
mild maternity, how should I know her now? 

“You would find her quite as easily now as then,” 
says my Prue, when I speak of it. 

15 She is right again, as usual, that precious woman ; 
and it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life 
have moored me fast to a book-keeper’s desk, they 
have left all the lands I longed to see fairer and fresher 
in my mind than they could ever be in my memory. 
20 Upon my only voyage I used to climb into the top 
and search the horizon for the shore. But now in a 
moment of calm thought I see a more Indian India 
than ever mariner discerned, and do not envy the 
youths who go there and make fortunes, who wear 
25 grass-cloth jackets, drink iced beer, and eat curry; 
whose minds fall asleep, and whose bodies have liver 
complaints. 

Unseen by me for ever, nor ever regretted, shall 
wave the Egyptian palms and the Italian pinesJ 


SEA FROM SHORE 


57 


Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still echo with 
the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon, 
unrifled of its marbles, look, perfect, across the ^gean 
blue. 

My young friends return from their foreign tours 5 
elate with the smiles of a nameless Italian or Parisian 
belle. I know not such cheap delights ; I am a suitor 
of Vittoria Colonna;° I walk with Tasso along the 
terraced garden of the Villa d’Este,° and look to see 
Beatrice® smiling down the rich gloom of the cypress 10 
shade. You stayed at the Hdtel Europa in Venice, at 
Danielli’s or the Leone bianco I am the guest of 
Marino Faliero,® and I whisper to his wife as we climb 
the giant staircase in the summer moonlight, 

“Ah I senza amare® 16 

Andare sul mare, 

Col sposo del mare, 

Non pup eonsolare.” 

It is for the same reason that I did not care to 
dine with you and Aurelia, that I am content not to 20 
stand in St. Peter’s. Alas ! if I could see the end of 
it, it would not be St. Peter’s. For those of us whom 
Nature means to keep at home, she provides entertain- 
ment. One man goes four thousand miles to Italy, 
and does not see it, he is so short-sighted. Another 25 
is so far-sighted that he stays in his room and sees 
more than Italy. 

But for this very reason, that it washes the shores 
of my possible Europe and Asia, the sea draws me 


58 


PRUE AND I 


constantly to itself. Before I came to New \ork, 
while I was still a clerk in Boston, courting Prue, 
and living out of town, I never knew of a ship sailing 
for India or even for England and France, but I went 
5 up to the State House cupola or to the observatory on 
some friend’s house in Roxbury, where I could not 
be interrupted, and there watched the departure. 

The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the stream; 
busy little boats and puffing steamers darted about 
10 it, clung to its sides, paddled away for it, or led the 
way to sea, as minnows might pilot a whale. The 
anchor was slowly swung at the bow ; I could not 
hear the sailors’ song, but I knew they were singing. 
I could not see the parting friends, but I knew fare- 
16 wells were spoken. I did not share the confusion, 
although I knew what bustle there was, what hurry, 
what shouting, what creaking, what fall of ropes and* 
iron, what sharp oaths, low laughs, whispers, sobs.j 
But I was cool, high, separate. To me it was 

20 “A painted ship® 

Upon a painted ocean.” 

The sails were shaken out, and the ship began to 
move. It was a fair breeze, perhaps, and no steamer 
was needed to tow her away. She receded down the 
25 bay. Friends turned back — I could not see them — 
and waved their hands, and wiped their eyes, and 
went home to dinner. Farther and farther from 
the ships at anchor, the lessening vessel became 


SEA FROM SHORE 


59 


single and solitary upon the water. The sun sank 
in the west; but I watched her still. Every flash 
of her sails, as she tacked and turned, thrilled my 
heart. 

Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen one 6 
of the passengers or the crew. I did not know the 
consignees, nor the name of the vessel. I had shipped 
no adventure, nor risked any insurance, nor made 
any bet, but my eyes clung to her as Ariadne’s® to the 
fading sails of Theseus.® The ship was freighted with lo 
more than appeared upon her papers, yet she was not 
a smuggler. She bore all there was of that nameless 
lading, yet the next ship would carry as much. She 
was freighted with fancy. My hopes, and wishes, 
and vague desires, were all on board. It seemed to 16 
me a treasure not less rich than that which filled the 
East Indiaman at the old dock in my boyhood. 

When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon the 
horizon, I waved my hand in last farewell, I strained 
my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind had gone to 20 
sea, and had left noise behind. But now I heard 
again the multitudinous murmur of the city, and went 
down rapidly, and threaded the short, narrow streets 
to the office. Yet, believe it, every dream of that day, 
as I watched the vessel, was written at night to Prue. 25 
She knew my heart had not sailed away. 

Those days are long past now, but still I walk upon 
the Battery and look towards the Narrows, and know 
that beyond them, separated only by the sea, are 


60 


PRUE AND I 


many of whom I would so gladly know, and so rarely 
hear. The sea rolls between us like the lapse of 
dusky ages. They trusted themselves to it, and it 
bore them away far ami far as if into the past. Last 
6 night I read of Antony, but I have not heard from 
Christopher these many months, and by so much 
farther away is he, so much older and more remote, 
than Antony. As for William, he is as vague as 
any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic dynasties. 
10 It is the sea that has done it, it has carried them 
off and put them away upon its other side. It is 
fortunate the sea did not put them upon its under- 
side. Are they hale and happy still? Is their hair 
grey, and have they mustachios ? Or have they taken 
15 to wigs and crutches? Are they popes or cardinals 
yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia Borgia,° or preach 
red republicanism to the Council of Ten?° Do they 
sing. Behold how brightly breaks the morning, with 
Masaniell6?° Do they laugh at Ulysses® and skip 
20 ashore to the Syrens?® Has Mesrour,® chief of the 
Eunuchs, caught them with Zobeide® in the Caliph’s 
garden, or have they made cheese cakes without 
pepper? Friends of my youth, where in your wander- 
ings have you tasted the blissful Lotus,® that you 
25 neither come nor send us tidings? 

Across the sfea also came idle rumours, as false 
reports steal into history and defile fair fames. Was 
it longer ago than yesterday that I walked with my 
cousin, then recently a widow, and talked with her of 


SEA FROM SHORE 


61 


the countries to which she meant to sail? She was 
young, and dark-eyed, and wore great hoops of gold, 
barbaric gold, in her ears. The hope of Italy, the 
thought of living there, had risen like a dawn in the 
darkness of her mind. I talked and listened by rapid 5 
turns. 

Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told me 
of her splendid plans, how palaces tapestried with 
gorgeous paintings should be cheaply hired, and the 
best of teachers lead her children to the completest ic 
and most various knowledge ; how, — and with her 
slender pittance ! — she should have a box at the 
opera, and a carriage, and liveried servants, and in 
perfect health and youth, lead a perfect life in a 
perfect climate? 15 

And now what do I hear? Why does a tear some- 
times drop so audibly upon my paper, that Titbottom 
looks across with a sort of mild rebuking glance of 
inquiry, whether it is kind to let even a single tear 
fall, when an ocean of tears is pent up in hearts that 20 
would burst and overflow if but one drop should force 
its way out? Why across the sea came faint gusty 
stories, like low voices in the wind, of a cloistered 
garden and sunny seclusion — and a life of unknown 
and unexplained luxury ? What is this picture of a 25 
pale face showered with streaming black hair, and 
large sad eyes looking upon lovely and noble children 
playing in the sunshine — and a brow pained with 
thought straining into their destiny? Who is this 


62 


PRVE AND I 


figure, a man tall and comely, with melting eyes and 
graceful motion, who comes and goes at pleasure, 
who is not a husband, yet has the key of the cloistered 
garden ? 

5 I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. The 
pictures pass before my mind suddenly and unawares, 
and I feel the tears rising that I would gladly repress. 
Titbottom looks at me, then stands by the window of 
the office and leans his brow against the cold iron 
10 bars, and looks down into the little square paved 
court. I take my hat and steal out of the office for a 
few minutes, and slowly pace the hurrying streets. 
Meek-eyed Alice ! magnificent Maud ! sweet baby 
Lilian ! why does the sea imprison you so far away, 
16 when will you return, where do you linger? The 
water laps idly about docks, — lies calm, or gaily 
heaves. Why does it bring me doubts and fears now, 
that brought such bounty of beauty in the days long 
gone? 

20 I remember that the day when my dark-haired 
cousin, with hoops of barbaric gold in her ears, sailed 
for Italy, was quarter-day, and we balanced the books 
at the office. It was nearly noon, and in my im- 
patience to be away, I had not added my columns 
25 with sufficient care. The inexorable hand of the 
office clock pointed sternly towards twelve, and the 
remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to noon. 

To a man whose pleasures are not many, and rather 
small, the loss of such an event as saying farewell 


SEA FROM SHORE 


63 


and wishing God-speed to a friend going to Europe, 
is a great loss. It was so to me, especially, because 
there was always more to me, in every departure, 
than the parting and the farewell. I was gradually 
renouncing this pleasure, as I saw small prospect of 
ending before noon, when Titbottom, after looking 
at me a moment, came to my side of the desk, and 
said : 

“I should like to finish that for you.” 

I looked at him : poor Titbottom ! he had no friends 
to wish God-speed upon any journey. I quietly wiped 
my pen, took down my hat, and went out. It was in 
the days of sail packets and less regularity, when 
going to Europe was more of an epoch in life. How 
gaily my cousin stood upon the deck and detailed to 
me her plan ! How merrily the children shouted and 
sang ! How long I held my cousin’s little hand in 
mine, and gazed into her great eyes, remembering 
that they would see and touch the things that were 
invisible to me for ever, but all the more precious and 
fair ! She kissed me — I was younger then — there 
were tears, I remember, and prayers, and promises, 
a waving handkerchief, — a fading sail. 

It was only the other day that I saw another part- 
ing of the same kind. I was not a principal, only a 
spectator ; but so fond am I of sharing, afar off, as it 
were, and unseen, the sympathies of human beings, 
that I cannot avoid often going to the dock upon 
steamer-days and giving myself to that pleasant and 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


64 


PRUE AND I 


melancholy observation. There is always a crowd, 
but this day it was almost impossible to advance 
through the masses of people. The eager faces 
hurried by ; a constant sti’eam poured up the gangway 
6 into the steamer, and the upper deck, to which I 
gradually made my way, was crowded with the pas- 
sengers and their friends. 

There was one group upon which my eyes first fell, 
and upon which my memory lingers. A glance, 
10 brilliant as daybreak, — a voice, ; 

“Her voice’s music, — call it the well’s bubbling:, the bird’s 
warble,” 

a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling farewell 
upon a circle of worshippers, to each one of whom 
15 that gracious calmness made the smile sweeter, and 
the farewell more sad — other figures, other flowers, 
an angel face — all these I saw in that group as I wasj 
swayed up and down the deck by the eager swarm of 
people. The hour came, and I went on shore with 
20 the rest. The plank was drawn away — the captain 
raised his hand — the huge steamer slowly moved — a 
cannon was fired — the ship was gone. 

l-he sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed 
away. In five minutes the steamer was as much 
25 separated from the shore as if it had been at sea a 
thousand years. 

I leaned against a post upon the dock and looked 
around. Ranged upon the edge of the wharf stood 


SEA FROM SHORE 


65 


that band of worshippers, waving handkerchiefs and 
straining their eyes to see the last smile of farewell — 
did any eager selfish eye hope to see a tear? They 
to whom the handkerchiefs were waved stood high 
upon the stern, holding flowers. Over them hung the 6 
great flag, raised by the gentle wind into the graceful 
folds of a canopy, — say rather a gorgeous gonfalon® 
waved over the triumphant departure, over that 
supreme youth, and bloom, and beauty, going out 
across the mystic ocean to carry a finer charm and 10 
more human splendour into those realms of my 
imagination beyond the sea. 

“You will return, O youth and beauty!” I said to 
my dreaming and foolish self, as I contemplated those 
fair figures, “ richer than Alexander with Indian 16 
spoils. All that historic association, that copious 
civilization, those grandeurs and graces of art, that 
variety and picturesqueness of life, will mellow and 
deepen your experience even as time silently touches 
those old pictures into a more persuasive and pathetic 20 
beauty, and as this increasing summer sheds ever 
softer lustre upon the landscape. You will return 
conquerors and not conquered. You will bring 
Europe, even as Aurelian® brought Zenobia® captive, 
to deck your homeward triumph. I do not wonder 26 
that these clouds break away, I do not wonder that 
the sun presses out and floods all the air, and land, 
and water, with light that graces with happy omens 
your stately farewell.” 


66 


PRUE AND I 


But if my faded face looked after them with such 
earnest and longing emotion, — I, a solitary old man, 
unknown to those fair beings, and standing apart 
from that band of lovers, yet in that moment bound 
5 more closely to them than they knew, — how was it 
with those whose hearts sailed away with that youth 
and beauty? I watched them closely from behind 
my post. I knew that life had paused with them; 
that the world stood still. I knew that the long, long 
10 summer would be only a yearning regret. I knew 
that each asked himself the mournful question, “Is 
this parting typical — this slow, sad, sweet, reces- 
sion?’’ And I knew that they did not care to ask 
whether they should meet again, nor dare to contem- 
16 plate the chances of the sea. 

The steamer swept on, she was near Staten Island, 
and a final gun boomed far and low across the water. 
The crowd was dispersing, but the little group re- 
mained. Was it not all Hood® had sung? 

20 “I saw thee, lovely Inez,® 

Descend along the shore 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners waved before ; 

And gentle youths and maidens gay, 

26 And snowy plumes they wore ; — 

It would have been a beauteous dream. 

If it had been no morel ” 


“O youth!” I said to them without speaking, 
be it gently said, as it is solemnly thought, should 


SEA FROM SHORE 


67 


they return no more, yet in your memories the high 
hour of their loveliness is for ever enshrined. Should 
they come no more they never will be old, nor 
changed, to you. You will wax and wane, you will 
suffer, and struggle, and grow old; but this summers 
vision will smile, immortal, upon your lives, and 
those fair faces shall shed, for ever, from under that 
slowly waving flag, hope and peace.’’ 

It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature. 
Long, long ago we lost our first-born, Prue and I. lo 
Since then, we have grown older and our children 
with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps, and 
decay. We are happy, our children are obedient and 
gay. But should Prue live until she has lost us all, 
and laid us, gray and weary, in our graves, she will 15 
have always one babe in her heart. Every mother 
who has lost an infant, has gained a child of immortal 
youth. Can you find comfort here, lovers, whose 
mistress has sailed away? 

I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only, 20 
as I watched the youths, and turned away while they 
still stood gazing. One, I observed, climbed a post 
and waved his black hat before the white-washed side 
of the shed over the dock, whence I supposed he 
would tumble into the water. Another had tied a 26 
handkerchief to the end of a somewhat baggy um- 
brella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had forgotten 
to wave it, so that it hung mournfully down, as if 
overpowered with grief it could not express. The 


68 


PRUE AND I 


entranced youth still held the umbrella aloft. It 
seemed to me as if he had struck his flag; or as if 
one of my cravats were airing in that sunlight. A 
negro carter was joking with an apple-woman at 
6 the entrance of the dock. The steamer was out of 
sight. 

I found that I was belated and hurried back to my 
desk. Alas ! poor lovers ; I wonder if they are watch- 
ing still? Has he fallen exhausted from the post into 
10 the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached and rent, 
still pendant upon that somewhat baggy umbrella? 

“Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day,” said 
I to Prue, as I stirred my tea at evening. 

As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me the 
16 sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name should be 
Hebe.° I took a lump of sugar and looked at her. 
She had never seemed so lovely, and as I dropped the 
lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced at Prue as 
I did so. The dear woman smiled, but did not answer 
20 my exclamation. 

Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the 
emotions of those I do not know. But sometimes 
the old longing comes over me as in the days when I 
timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and mag- 
25 netically sailed around the world. 

It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved 
farewell to the steamer, and while the lovely figures 
standing under the great gonfalon were as vivid in 
my mind as ever, that a day of premature sunny sad- 


SEA FROM SHORE 


69 


ness, like those of the Indian summer, drew me away 
from the office early in the afternoon : for fortunately 
it is our dull season now, and even Titbottom some- 
times leaves the office by five o’clock. Although why 
he should leave it, or where he goes, or what he does, 
I do not well know. Before I knew him, I used 
sometimes to meet him with a man whom I was after- 
wards told was Bartleby, the scrivener. Even then 
it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their loneli- 
ness. than made society for each other. Recently I 
have not seen Bartleby ; but Titbottom seems no more 
solitary because he is alone. 

I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about. 
Staten Island looked so alluring, tender-hued with 
summer and melting in the haze, that I resolved to 
indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a little 
selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at my watch, 
and saw that if I should hurry home for Prue the trip 
would be lost ; then I should be disappointed, and she 
would be grieved. 

Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions, which 
I am going to answer affirmatively, with ought) to 
take the trip and recount my adventures to Prue upon 
my return, whereby I should actually enjoy the ex- 
cursion and the pleasure of telling her; while she 
would enjoy my story and be glad that I was pleased ? 
Ought I wilfully to deprive us both of this various 
enjoyment by aiming at a higher, which, in losing, 
we should lose all ? 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


70 


PRUE AND I 


Unfortunately, just as I was triumphantly answer- 
ing “Certainly not!” another question marched into 
my mind, escorted by a very defiant ought. 

“Ought I to go when I have such a debate about 
5it?” 

But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my own 
scruples, the ferry-bell suddenly rang, and answered 
all my questions. Involuntarily I hurried on board. 
The boat slipped from the dock. I went up on deck 
10 to enjoy the view of the city from the bay, but just as 
I sat down, and meant to have said “how beautiful I” 
I found myself asking : 

“Ought I to have come?” 

Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the scenery 
15 of the bay; but the remembrance of Prue and the 
gentle influence of the day plunged me into a mood of 
pensive reverie which nothing tended to destroy, 
until we suddenly arrived at the landing. 

As I was stepping ashore", I was greeted by Mr. 
20 Bourne, who passes the summer on the island, and 
who hospitably asked if I were going his way. His 
way was toward the southern end of the island, and I 
said yes. His pockets were full of papers and his 
brow of wrinkles ; so when we reached the point 
25 where he should turn off, I asked him to let me alight, 
although he was very anxious to carry me wherever 
I was going. 

“I am only strolling about,” I answered, as I 
clambered carefully out of the wagon. 


SEA FROM SHORE 


71 


“Strolling about?” asked he, in a bewildered 
manner; “do people stroll about, now-a-days?” 

“Sometimes,” I answered, smiling, as I pulled my 
trousers down over my boots, for they had dragged 
up, as I stepped out of the wagon, “and beside, what 
can an old book-keeper do better in the dull season 
than stroll about this pleasant island, and watch the 
ships at sea?” 

Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes. 

“I’d give five thousand dollars a year for a dull 
season,” said he, “but as for strolling, I’ve forgotten 
how.” 

As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily across the 
fields and woods, and were fastened upon the distant 
sails. 

“It is pleasant,” he said musingly, and fell into 
silence. But I had no time to spare, so I wished him 
good-afternoon. 

“I hope your wife is well,” said Bourne to me, as 
I turned away. Poor Bourne ! He drove on alone in 
his wagon. 

But I made haste to the most solitary point upon 
the southern shore, and there sat, glad to be so near 
the sea. There was that warm, sympathetic silence 
in the air, that gives to Indian-summer days almost 
a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze, that 
seemed only the kindly air made visible, hung over 
the sea. The water lapped languidly among the 
rocks, and the voices of children in a boat beyond. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


72 


PRUE AND I 


rang musically, and gradually receded, until they 
were lost in the distance. 

It was some time before I was aware of the outline 
of a large ship, drawn vaguely upon the mist, which 
5 1 supposed, at first, to be only a kind of mirage. But 
the more steadfastly I gazed, the more distinct it 
became, and I could no longer doubt that I saw a 
stately ship lying at anchor, not more than half a 
mile from the land. 

10 “It is an extraordinary place to anchor,” I said to 
myself, “or can she be ashore?” 

There were no signs of distress ; the sails were care- 
fully clewed up, and there were no sailors in the tops, 
nor upon the shrouds. A flag, of which I could not 
15 see the device or the nation, hung heavily at the stern, 
and looked as if it had fallen asleep. My curiosity 
began to be singularly excited. The form of the 
vessel seemed not to be permanent; but within a 
quarter of an hour, I was sure that I had seen half 
20 a dozen different ships. As I gazed, I saw no more 
sails nor masts, but a long range of oars, flashing 
like a golden fringe, or straight and stiff, like the legs 
of a sea-monster. 

“It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified by 
'25 the mist,” I said to myself, complacently. 

But, at the same moment, there was a concentrated 
flashing and blazing in one spot among the rigging, 
and it was as if I saw a beatified ram, or, more truly, 
a sheep-skin, splendid as the hair of Berenice.® 


SEA FROM SHORE 


73 


“Is that the golden fleece?” I thought. “But, 
surely, Jason and the Argonauts® have gone home 
long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing expedi- 
tions now?” I asked myself, in perplexity. “Can 
this be a California steamer?” 5 

How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I 
not see those sails, “thin and sere”? Did I not feel 
the melancholy of that solitary bark ? It had a mystic 
aura; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in it;s wake, for 
it was drifting seaward. A strange fear curdled 10 
along my veins. That summer sun shone cool. The 
weary, battered ship was gashed, as if gnawed by 
ice. There was terror in the air, as a “skinny hand 
so brown” waved to me from the deck. I lay as one 
bewitched. The hand of the ancient mariner seemed 15 
to be reaching for me, like the hand of death. 

Death? Why, as I was inl;^ praying Prue’s for- 
giveness for my solitary ramble and consequent 
demise, a glance like the fulness of summer splendour 
gushed over me; the odour of flowers and of eastern 20 
gums made all the atmosphere. I breathed the 
orient, and lay drunk with balm, while that strange 
ship, a golden galley now, with glittering draperies 
festooned with flowers, paced to the measured beat 
of oars along the calm, and Cleopatra smiled allur-25 
ingly from the great pageant’s heart. 

Was this a barge for summer waters, this peculiar 
ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, a cumbrous 
grandeur, although its masts were shattered, and its 


74 


PRUE AND I 


sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the sea, | 
as if tormented and exhausted by long driving and | 
drifting. I saw no sailors, but a great Spanish ensign 1 
floated over, and waved, a funereal plume. I knew I 
5 it then. The armada was long since scattered; but, 
floating far 

“on desolate rainy seas,” 

lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here 
lay one of the fated ships of Spain. The huge galleon 
10 seemed to fill all the air, built up against the sky, ? 
like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine against the , 
sunset. 

But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the 
mast-head — a long low vessel darted swiftly where 
15 the vast ship lay; there came a shrill piping whistle, 
the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing oaths, sharp 
pistol cracks, the thunder of command, and over all 
the gusty yell of a demoniac chorus, 

“My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed.” 

20 — There were no clouds longer, but under a serene 
sky I saw a bark moving with festal pomp, thronged 
with grave senators in flowing robes, and one with 
ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a ring. The 
smooth bark swam upon a sea like that of southern 
25 latitudes. I saw the Bucentoro° and the nuptials of 
Venice and the Adriatic. 


SEA FROM SHORE 


75 


Who were those coming over the side ? Who 
crowded the boats, and sprang into the water, men 
in old Spanish armour, with plumes and swords, and 
bearing a glittering cross ? Who was he standing 
upon the deck with folded arms and gazing towards 
the shore, as lovers on their mistresses and martyrs 
upon heaven? Over what distant and tumultuous 
seas has this small craft escaped from other centuries 
and distant shores? What sounds of foreign hymns, 
forgotten now, were these, and what solemnity of 
debarkation ? Was this grave form Columbus ? 

Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed 
just now. This group of stern-faced men with high 
peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck and looked 
out upon a shore which, I could see by their joyless 
smile of satisfaction, was rough, and bare, and for- 
bidding. In that soft afternoon, standing in mournful 
groups upon the small deck, why did they seem to me to 
be seeing the sad shores of wintry New England ? That 
phantom-ship could not be the May Elower ! 

I gazed long upon the shifting illusion. 

“If I should board this ship,’’ I asked myself, 
“where should I go? whom should I meet? what 
should I see? Is not this the vessel that shall carry 
me to my Europe, my foreign countries, my impos- 
sible India, the Atlantis® that I have lost?” 

As I sat staring at it, I could not but wonder 
whether Bourne had seen this sail when he looked 
upon the water? Does he see such sights every day. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


76 


PRUE AND I 


because he lives down here ? Is it not perhaps a I 
magic yacht of his; and does he slip off privately 
after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and Egypt, 
perhaps to El Dorado?® Does he run races with 
6 Ptolemy, Philopater?® and Hiero of Syracuse,® rare 
regattas on fabulous seas ? 

Why not? He is a rich man, too, and why should 
not a New York merchant do what a Syracuse tyrant 
and an Egyptian prince did? Has Bourne’s yacht 
10 those sumptuous chambers, like Philopater’s galley, 
of which the greater part was made of split cedar, 
and of Milesian® cypress ; and has he twenty doors 
put together with beams of citron-wood, with many 
ornaments ? Has the roof of his cabin a carved 
15 golden face, and is his sail linen with a purple fringe ? 
“I suppose it is so,” I said to myself, as I looked 
wistfully at the ship, which began to glimmer and melt 
in the haze. | 

“It certainly is not a fishing-smack?” I asked, I 
20 doubtfully. I 

No, it must be Bourne’s magic yacht; I was sure | 
of it. I could not help laughing at poor old Hiero, | 
whose cabins were divided into many rooms, with 
floors composed of mosaic work, of all kinds of stones 
25 tessellated. And, on this mosaic, the whole story of 
the Iliad was depicted in a marvellous manner. He 
had gardens “of all sorts of most wonderful beauty, 
enriched with all sorts of plants, and shadowed by 
roofs of lead or tiles. And, besides this, there were 


SEA FROM SHORE 


77 


tents roofed with boughs of white ivy and of the vine 
— the roots of which derived their moisture from 
casks full of earth, and were watered in the same 
manner ai the gardens. There were temples, also, 
with doors of ivory and citron-wood, furnished in the 5 
most exquisite manner, with pictures and statues, 
and with goblets and vases of every form and shape 
imaginable.” 

“Poor Bourne!” I said. “I suppose his is finer 
than Hiero’s, which is a thousand years old. Poor 10 
I5ourne I I don’t wonder that his eyes are weary, 
and that he would pay so dearly for a day of leisure. 
Dear me ! is it one of the prices that must be paid for 
wealth, the keeping of a magic yacht?” 

Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud. 15 

“The magic yacht is not Bourne’s,” answered a 
familiar voice. I looked up, and Titbottom stood 
by my side. “Do you not know that all Bourne’s 
money would not buy the yacht?” asked he. “He 
cannot even see it. And if he could, it would be no 20 
magic yacht to him, but only a battered and solitary 
hulk.” 

The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom spoke, 
and there lay my Spanish galleon, my Bucentoro, my 
Cleopatra’s galley, Columbus’s Santa Maria, and the 25 
Pilgrims’ May Flower, an old bleaching wreck upon 
the beach. 

“Do you suppose any true love is in vain?” asked 
Titbottom solemnly, as he stood bareheaded, and the 


78 


PRUE AND I 


soft sunset wind played with his few hairs. “Could 
Cleopatra smile upon Antony, and the moon upon 
Endymion, and the sea not love its lovers?” 

The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he spoke. 

5 1 might have sailed in Hiero’s ship, or in Roman 
galleys, had I lived long centuries ago, and been 
born a nobleman. But would it be so sweet a re- 
membrance, that of lying on a marble couch, under 
a golden-faced roof, and within doors of citron-wood 
10 and ivory, and sailing in that state to greet queens 
who are mummies now, as that of seeing those fair 
figures, standing under the great gonfalon, them- 
selves as lovely as Egyptian belles, and going to see 
more than Egypt dreamed? 

15 The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne’s. I 
took Titbottom’s arm, and we sauntered toward the 
ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with this sad 
vizier? My languid odalisque,® the sea, lay at my 
feet as we advanced, and sparkled all over with a 
20 sunset smile. Had I trusted myself to her arms, to 
be borne to the realms that I shall never see, or sailed 
long voyages towards Cathay,® I am not sure I should 
have brought a more precious present to True, than 
the story of that afternoon. 

25 “Ought I to have gone alone?” I asked her, as I 
ended. 

“I ought not to have gone with you,” she replied 
“for I had work to do. But how strange that you 
should see such things at Staten Island. I never 


SEA FROM SHORE 


79 


did, Mr. Titbottom,” said she, turning to my deputy, 
whom I had asked to tea. 

“Madam,” answered Titbottom, with a kind of 
wan and quaint dignity, so that I could not help 
thinking he must have arrived in that stray ship from 5 
the Spanish armada, “neither did Mr. Bourne.” 


TITBOTTOM’S SPECTACLES 


“In my mind’s eye, Horatio.” 

Hamlet. 

Prue and I do not entertain much ; our means for- 
bid it. In truth, other people entertain for us. We 
enjoy that hospitality of which no account is made. 
We see the show, and hear the music, and smell the i 
showers, of great festivities, tasting, as it were, the 
drippings from rich dishes. 

Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our 
dinners, even on state occasions, are strictly in keep- 
ing, and almost our only guest is Titbottom. I buy 
10 a handful of roses as I come up from the office, per- 
haps, and Prue arranges them so prettily in a glass ! 
dish for the centre of the table, that, even when I 
have hurried out to see Aurelia step into her carriage 
to go out to dine, I have thought that the bouquet 
15 she carried was not more beautiful because it was 
more costly. 

I grant that it was more harmonious with her superb 
beauty and her rich attire. And I have no doubt that 
if Aurelia knew the old man, whom she must have 
20 seen so often watching her, and his wife, who orna- 
ments her sex with as much sweetness, although with 
less splendour, than Aurelia herself, she w^ould also I 
SO 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


81 


acknowledge that the nosegay of roses was as fine and 
fit upon their table, as her own sumptuous bouquet 
is for herself. I have so much faith in the perception 
I of that lovely lady. 

i It is my habit, — - 1 hope I may say, my nature, — 5 
to believe the best of people, rather than the worst. 

If I thought that all this sparkling setting of beauty, 

— this fine fashion, — these blazing jewels, and lus- 
trous silks, and airy gauzes, embellished with gold- 
i tlireaded embroidery and wrought in a thousand ex- 10 
quisite elaborations, so that I cannot see one of those 
lovely girls pass me by, without thanking God for 
the vision, — if I thought that this was all, and that, 
underneath her lace flounces and diamond bracelets, 
Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman, then I should 15 
turn sadly homeward, for I should see that her jewels 
were flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, 

I that her laces were of a more exquisite loveliness 
I than the woman whom they merely touched with a 
superficial grace. It would be like a gaily decorated 20 
mausoleum, — bright to see, but silent and dark 
within. 

“Great excellences, my dear Prue,” I sometimes 
allow myself to say, “lie concealed in the depths of 
character, like pearls at the bottom of the sea. Under 25 
the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are sus- 
pected ! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight 
of them by one person. Hence every man’s mistress 
is apt to be an enigma to everybody else. 

G 


82 


PRUE AND I 


“I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, 
people will say she is a most admirable girl, certainly ; 
but they cannot understand why any man should be 
in love with her. As if it were at all necessary that 
5 they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a 
pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that 
others did not see it as that he did, will tremble until 
he knows his passion is returned; feeling, of course, 
that the whole world must be in love with this paragon, 
10 who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy 
as he. 

“I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue,” I con- 
tinue, and my wife looks up, with pleased pride, from | 
her work, as if I were such an irresistible humorist, ^ 
15 “ you will allow me to believe that the depth may be 
calm, although the surface is dancing. If you tell me 
that Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that 
you think so. But I shall know, all the while, what 
profound dignity, and sweetness, and peace lie at the 
20 foundation of her character.’’ 

I say such things to Titbottom, during the dull season 
at the office. And I have known him sometimes to 
reply, with a kind of dry, sad humour, not as if he en- 
joyed the joke, but as if the joke must be made, that 
25 he saw no reason why I should be dull because the 
season was so. 

“ And what do I know of Aurelia, or any other girl ? ” 
he says to me with that abstracted air; “I, whose 
Aurelias were of another century, and another zone.” 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


83 


j Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite 
profane to interrupt. But as we sit upon our high 
stools, at the desk, opposite each other, I leaning upon 
my elbows, and looking at him, he, with sidelong 
face, glancing out of the window, as if it commanded 
a boundless landscape, instead of a dim, dingy office 
court, I cannot refrain from saying : 

“Well!’^ 

He turns slowly, and I go chatting on, — a little 
too loquacious perhaps, about those young girls. But 
I know that Titbottom regards such an excess as 
venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could be- 
lieve it the reflection of a smile from long, long years 
ago. 

One day, after I had been talking for a long time, 
and we had put up our books, and were preparing to 
leave, he stood for some time by the window, gazing 
with a drooping intentness, as if he really saw some- 
thing more than the dark court, and said slowly : 

“Perhaps you would have different impressions of 
things, if you saw them through my spectacles.” 

There was no change in his expression. He still 
looked from the window, and I said : 

“Titbottom, I did not know that you used glasses. 
I have never seen you wearing spectacles.” 

“No, I don’t often wear them. I am not very fond 
of looking through them. But sometimes an irre- 
sistible necessity compels me to put them on, and I 
cannot help seeing.” 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


84 


PRUE AND I 


Titbottom sighed. 

“ Is it so grievous a fate to see ? ” inquired I. 

“Yes; through my spectacles/’ he said, turning 
slowly, and looking at me with wan solemnity. 

6 It grew dark as we stood in the office talking, and, 
taking our hats, we went out together. The narrow 
street of business was deserted. The heavy iron | 
shutters were gloomily closed over the windows. I 
From one or two offices struggled the dim gleam of | 
loan early candle, by whose light some perplexed ac- 
countant sat belated, and hunting for his error. A 
careless clerk passed, whistling. But the great tide 
of life had ebbed. We heard its roar far away, and the 
sound stole into that silent street like the murmur of 
15 the ocean into an inland dell. 

“You will come and dine with us, Titbottom ?” 

He assented by continuing to walk with me, and 
I think we were both glad when we reached the house, 
and Prue came to meet us, saying : 

20 '‘Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr. Tit- 
bottom to dine?” 

Titbottom smiled gently, and answered : 

“He might have brought his spectacles with him, 
and have been a happier man for it.” 

25 Prue looked a little puzzled. 

“My dear,” I said, “you must know that our friend, 
Mr. Titbottom, is the happy possessor of a pair of 
wonderful spectacles. I have never seen them, in- 
deed; and, from what he says, I should be rather 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


85 


[f 

afraid of being seen by them. Most short-sighted 
persons are very glad to have the help of glasses ; but 
i Mr. Titbottom seems to find very little pleasure in 
j his.’’ 

i “It is because they make him too far-sighted, per- 5 
I haps,” interrupted Prue quietly, as she took the silver 
! soup-ladle from the sideboard. 

We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took her 
work. Can a man be too far-sighted? I did not ask 
the question aloud. The very tone in which Prue had 10 
spoken, convinced me that he might. 

“At least,” I said, “Mr. Titbottom will not refuse 
to tell us the history of his mysterious spectacles. I 
have known plenty of magic in eyes” (and I glanced 
at the tender blue eyes of Prue), “but I have not heard 15 
of any enchanted glasses.” 

“Yet you must have seen the glass in which your 
j wife looks every morning, and, I take it, that glass 
must be daily enchanted,” said Titbottom, with a bow 
of quaint respect to my wife. 20 

I do not think I have seen such a blush upon Prue’s 
cheek since — well, since a great many years ago. 

“ I will gladly tell you the history of my spectacles,” 
began Titbottom. “It is very simple; and I am not 
at all sure that a great many other people have not a 25 
pair of the same kind. I have never, indeed, heard of 
them by the gross, like those of our young friend, 
Moses, the son of the Vicar of Wakefield. In fact, 

I think a gross would be quite enough to supply the 


86 


PRUE AND I 


world. It is a kind of article for which the demand 
does not increase with use. If we should all wear 
spectacles like mine, we should never smile any more. 
Or — I am not quite sure — we should all be very 
5 happy.” 

“A very important difference,” said Prue, counting 
her stitches. 

“You know my grandfather Titbottom was a West 
Indian. A large proprietor, and an easy man, he 
10 basked in the tropical sun, leading his quiet, luxurious 
life. He lived much alone, and was what people call 
eccentric — by which I understand, that he was very 
much himself, and, refusing the influence of other 
people, they had their revenges, and called him names.! 
15 It is a habit not exclusively tropical. I think I have 
seen the same thing even in this city. 

“ But he was greatly beloved — my bland and 
bountiful grandfather. He was so large-hearted and 
open-handed. He was so friendly, and thoughtful, 
20 and genial, that even his jokes had the air of graceful 
benedictions. He did not seem to grow old, and he 
was one of those who never appear to have been very 
young. He flourished in a perennial maturity, an 
immortal middle-age. 

25 “ My grandfather lived upon one of the small islands 

— St. Kitt’s,° perhaps — and his domain extended 
to the sea. His house, a rambling West Indian man- ^ 
sion, was surrounded with deep, spacious piazzas, 
covered with luxurious lounges, among which one 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


87 


capacious chair was his peculiar seat. They tell me, 
he used sometimes to sit there for the whole day, his 
great, soft, brown eyes fastened upon the sea, watching 
the specks of sails that flashed upon the horizon, while 
the evanescent expressions chased each other over his 5 
placid face, as if it reflected the calm and changing sea 
before him. 

“His morning costume was an ample dressing-gown 
of gorgeously flowered silk, and his morning was very 
apt to last all day. He rarely read ; but he would 10 
pace the great piazza for hours, with his hands buried 
in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of sweet 
reverie, which any book must be a very entertaining 
one to produce. 

“Society, of course, he saw little. There was some 15 
slight apprehension that, if he were bidden to social 
entertainments, he might forget his coat, or arrive 
without some other essential part of his dress ; and 
there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom family, that 
once, having been invited to a ball in honour of a new 20 
governor of the island, my grandfather Titbottom 
sauntered into the hall towards midnight, wrapped 
in the gorgeous flowers of his dressing-gown, and with 
his hands buried in the pockets, as usual. There was 
great excitement among the guests, and immense 25 
deprecation of gubernatorial ire. Fortunately, it hap- 
pened that the governor and my grandfather were old 
friends, and there was no offence. But, as they were 
conversing together, one of the distressed managers 


88 


PRUE AND I 


cast indignant glances at the brilliant costume of my 
grandfather, who summoned him, and asked cour- 
teously : 

“ ‘ Did you invite me, or my coat ? ’ 

5 “ ' You, in a proper coat,’ replied the manager. 

“The governor smiled approvingly, and looked at 
my grandfather. 

‘“My friend,’ said he to the manager, ‘I beg your 
pardon, I forgot.’ 

10 “The next day, my grandfather was seen prome- 
nading in full ball dress along the streets of the little 
town. 

“‘They ought to know,’ said he, ‘that I have a 
proper coat, and that not contempt, nor poverty, 
15 but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball in my dressing- 
gown.’ 

“He did not much frequent social festivals after 
this failure, but he always told the story with satis- ; 
faction and a quiet smile. 

20 “To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uni- 
form even to weariness. But the old native dons, i 
like my grandfather, ripen in the prolonged sunshine, 
like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, nor know of 
existence more desirable. Life in the tropics I take 
25 to be a placid torpidity. 

“During the long, warm mornings of nearly half 
a century, my grandfather Titbottom had sat in his 
dressing-gown, and gazed at the sea. But one calm 
June day, as he slowly paced the piazza after break- 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


89 


fast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a little vessel, 
evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spy- 
glass, and, surveying the craft, saw that she came 
from the neighbouring island. She glided smoothly, 
slowly, over the summer sea. The warm morning airs 
was sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat. The 
sea sparkled languidly, and the brilliant blue sky 
hung cloudlessly over. Scores of little island vessels 
had my grandfather seen coming 6ver the horizon, 
and cast anchor in the port. Hundreds of summer lo 
i mornings had the white sails flashed and faded, like 
vague faces through forgotten dreams. But this time 
he laid down the spyglass, and leaned against a column 
of the piazza, and watched the vessel with kn intent- 
ness that he could not explain. She came nearer and 15 
nearer, a graceful spectre in the dazzling morning. 

^‘'Decidedly, I must step down and see about that 
vessel,’ said my grandfather Titbottom. 

“He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, 
and stepped from the piazza, with no other protection 20 
from the sun than the little smoking-cap upon his 
head. His face wore a calm, beaming smile, as if he 
loved the whole world. He was not an old man ; but 
there was almost a patriarchal pathos in his expres- 
sion, as he sauntered along in the sunshine towards 25 
the shore. A group of idle gazers was collected, to 
watch the arrival. The little vessel furled her sails, 
and drifted slowly landward, and, as she was of very 
light draft, she came close to the shelving shore. A 


90 


PRUE AND I 


long plank was put out from her side, and the debarka- 
tion commenced. 

“My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on, to 
see the passengers as they passed. There were but 
5 a few of them, and mostly traders from the neigh- 
bouring island. But suddenly the face of a young 
girl appeared over the side of the vessel, and she 
stepped upon the plank to descend. My grandfather 
Titbottom instantly advanced, and, moving briskly, 
10 reached the top of the plank at the same moment, 
and with the old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, 
and one hand in the pocket of his dressing-gown, 
with the other he handed the young lady carefully 
down the plank. That young lady was afterwards my 
15 grandmother Titbottom. 

“For, over the gleaming sea which he had watched 
so long, and which seemed thus to reward his patient 
gaze, came his bride that sunny morning. 

“‘Of course, we are happy,’ he used to say to her, 
20 after they were married : ‘ For you are the gift of 

the sun I have loved so long and so well.’ And my 
grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly 
upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could 
fancy him a devout Parsee,° caressing sunbeams. 

25 “There were endless festivities upon occasion of 
the marriage ; and my grandfather did not go to one 
of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle sweetness 
of his wife melted every heart into love and sympathy. 
He was much older than she, without doubt. But 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


91 


age, as he used to say with a smile of immortal youth, 
is a matter of feeling, not of years. 

“And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the 
piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes upon that 
summer sea, and saw a younger lover, perhaps some 5 
one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy 
the foreground of all young maidens’ visions by the 
sea, yet she could not find one more generous and 
gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and loving than 
my grandfather Titbottom. 10 

“And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay 
calmly sleeping, she leaned out of her window, and 
sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility, and 
watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the 
water, until the dawn glided over it — it was only that 15 
mood of nameless regret and longing, which underlies 
all human happiness ; or it was the vision of that life 
of cities and the world, which she had never seen, but 
of which she had often read, and which looked very 
fair and alluring across the sea, to a girlish imagina-20 
tion, which knew that it should never see that reality. 

“These West Indian years were the great days of 
the family,” said Titbottom, with an air of majestic ^ 
and regal regret, pausing, and musing, in our little par- 
lour, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering England. 25 

True raised her eyes from her work, and looked at 
him with subdued admiration; for I have observed 
that, like the rest of her sex, she has a singular sym- 
pathy with the representative of a reduced family. 


92 


PRUE AND I 


Perhaps it is their finer perception, which leads 
these tender-hearted women to recognize the divine 
right of social superiority so much more readily than 
we ; and yet, much as Titbottom was enhanced in my 
5 wife’s admiration by the discovery that his dusky 
sadness of nature and expression was, as it were, the 
expiring gleam and late twilight of ancestral splen- 
dours, I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have preferred 
him for book-keeper a moment sooner upon that ac- 
10 count. In truth, I have observed, down town, that 
the fact of your ancestors doing nothing, is not con- 
sidered good proof that you can do anything. 

But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than 
action, and I understand easily enough why she is 
15 never tired of hearing me read of Prince Charlie.® 
If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little 
handsomer, a little more gallantly dressed — in fact, 
a little more of a Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes 
would not have fallen again upon her work so tran- 
20 quilly, as he resumed his story. 

“I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, al- 
though I was a very young child, and he was a very 
old man. My young mother and my young grand- 
mother are very distinct figures in my memory, minis- 
25 tering to the old gentleman, wrapped in his dressing- 
gown, and seated upon the piazza. I remember his 
white hair, and his calm smile, and how, not long 
before he died, he called me to him, and laying his 
^land upon my head, said to me : 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


93 


“ ‘ My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, 
I nor life the fairy stories which the women tell you 
‘ here, as you sit in their laps. I shall soon be gone, 
I but I want to leave with you some memento of my 
; love for you, and I know of nothing more valuable 
‘ than these spectacles, which your grandmother brought 
from her native island, when she arrived here one fine 
summer morning, long ago. I cannot tell whether, 
i when you grow older, you will regard them as a gift 
of the greatest value, or as something that you had been 
happier never to have possessed.’ 

“‘But, grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.’ 

“ ‘ My son, are you not human ? ’ said the old gentle- 
man ; and how shall I ever forget the thoughtful 
sadness with which, at the same time, he handed me 
the spectacles ? 

“Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my 
grandfather. But I saw no grandfather, no piazza, 
no flowered dressing-gown ; I saw only a luxuriant 
palm-tree, waving broadly over a tranquil landscape ; 
pleasant homes clustered around it; gardens teem- 
ing with fruit and flowers ; flocks quietly feeding ; 
birds wheeling and chirping. I heard children’s voices, 
and the low lullaby of happy mothers. The sound of 
cheerful singing came wafted from distant fields upon 
the light breeze. Golden harvests glistened out of 
sight, and I caught their rustling whispers of prosperity. 
A warm, mellow atmosphere bathed the whole. 

“I have seen copies of the landscapes of the Italian 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


94 


PRUB AND I 


painter Claude, which seemed to me faint reminis- 
cences of that calm and happy vision. But all this 
peace and prosperity seemed to flow from the spread- 
ing palm as from a fountain. 

5 “I do not know how long I looked, but I had, ap- 
parently, no power, as I had no will, to remove the 
spectacles. What a wonderful island must Nevis be, 
thought I, if people carry such pictures in their pockets, 
only by buying a pair of spectacles ! What wonder 
10 that my dear grandmother Titbottom has lived such 
a placid life, and has blessed us all with her sunny 
temper, when she has lived surrounded by such images 
of peace ! 

“My grandfather died. But still, in the warm 
15 morning sunshine upon the piazza, I felt his placid 
presence, and as I crawled into his great chair, and 
drifted on in reverie through the still, tropical day, it 
was as if his soft, dreamy eye had passed into my soul. 
My grandmother cherished his memory with tender 
20 regret. A violent passion of grief for his loss was no 
more possible than for the pensive decay of the year. 

“We have no portrait of him, but I see always, 
when I remember him, that peaceful and luxuriant 
palm. And I think that to have known or^e good 
25 old man — one man who, through the chances and 
rubs of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, 
like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace, 
helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other, 
more than many sermons. I hardly know whether 


TIT BOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


95 


! to be grateful to my grandfather for the spectacles ; 
i and yet when I remember that it is to them I owe the 
; pleasant image of him which I cherish, I seem to my- 
self sadly ungrateful. 

“Madam,’’ said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly, “my 
memory is a long and gloomy gallery, and only re- 
motely, at its further end, do I see the glimmer of soft 
sunshine, and only there are the pleasant pictures 
hung. They seem to me very happy along whose 
I gallery the sunlight streams to their very feet, strik- 
ing all the pictured walls into unfading splendour.” 

Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Titbottom 
paused a moment, and I turned towards her, I found 
her mild eyes fastened upon my face, and glistening 
with many tears. I knew that the tears meant that 
she felt herself to be one of those who seemed to Tit- 
bottom very happy. 

“Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon the 
family after the head was gone. The great house was 
relinquished. My parents were both dead, and my 
grandmother had entire charge of me. But from the 
moment that I received the gift of the spectacles, I 
could not resist their fascination, and I withdrew into 
myself, and became a solitary boy. There were not 
many companions for me of my own age, and they 
gradually left me, or, at least, had not a hearty sym- 
pathy with me ; for, if they teased me, I pulled out 
my spectacles and surveyed them so seriously that 
they acquired a kind of awe of me, and evidently re- 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


96 


PRUE AND I 


garded my grandfather’s gift as a concealed magical 
weapon which might be dangerously drawn upon them 
at any moment. Whenever, in our games, there were 
quarrels and high words, and I began to feel about 
5 my dress and to wear a grave look, they all took the 
alarm, and shouted, ‘Look out for Titbottom’s spec- 
tacles,’ and scattered like a flock of scared sheep. 

“Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before 
they took the alarm, I saw strange sights when I 
10 looked at them through the glasses. 

“If two were quarrelling about a marble or a ball, 
I had. only to go behind a tree where I was concealed 
and look at them leisurely. Then the scene changed, 
and it was no longer a green meadow with boys play-j 
15 ing, but a spot which I did not recognize, and forms 
that made me shudder, or smile. It was not a big boy 
bullying a little one, but a young wolf with glistening 
teeth and a lamb cowering before him ; or, it was a 
dog faithful and famishing — or a star going slowly 
20 into eclipse — or a rainbow fading — or a flower bloom- 
ing — or a sun rising — or a waning moon. 

“The revelations of the spectacles determined my 
feeling for the boys, and for all whom I saw through 
them. No shyness, nor awkwardness, nor silence, 
25 could separate me from those who looked lovely as 
lilies to my illuminated eyes. But the vision made me 
afraid. If I felt myself warmly drawn to any one, I 
struggled with the fierce desire of seeing him through 
the spectacles, for I feared to find him something else 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


97 


i than I fancied. I longed to enjoy the luxury of igno- 
rant feeling, to love without knowing, to float like a 
leaf upon the eddies of life, drifted now to a sunny 
point, now to a solemn shade — now over glitter- 
! ing ripples, now over gleaming calms, — and not to 5 
determined ports, a trim vessel with an inexorable 
: rudder. 

'‘But sometimes, mastered after long struggles, as 
if the unavoidable condition of owning the spectacles 
were using them, I seized them and sauntered into the 10 
little town. Putting them to my eyes I peered into the 
houses and at the people who passed me. Here sat a 
family at breakfast, and I stood at the window look- 
ing in. O motley meal ! fantastic vision ! The good 
mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a grave, respect- 15 
! able being, eating muffins. But I saw only a bank- 
bill, more or less crumbled and tattered, marked with 
a larger or lesser figure. If a sharp wind blew sud- 
denly, I saw it tremble and flutter ; it was thin, flat, 
impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked with 20 
my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the 
humid tenderness with which she regarded her strange 
vis-a-vis ° Is life only a game of blindman’s-buff ? of 
droll cross-purposes ? 

“Or I put them on again, and then looked at the 26 
wives. How many stout trees I saw, — how many 
tender flowers, — how many placid pools ; yes, and 
how many little streams winding out of sight shrink- 
ing before the large, hard, round eyes opposite, and 

H 


98 


PRUE AND I 


slipping off into solitude and shade, with a low, inner 
song for their own solace. 

“In many houses I thought to see angels, nymphs, 
or, at least, women, and could only find broomsticks, 

5 mops, or kettles, hurrying about, rattling and tin- 
kling, in a state of shrill activity. I made calls upon 
elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of 
silk, and the delicacy of lace, and the glitter of jewels, 

I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock’s feather, 
10 flounced, and furbelowed, and fluttering; or an iron 
rod, thin, sharp, and hard ; nor could I possibly mis- 
take the movement of the drapery for any flexibility 
of the thing draped. 

“Or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of per- 
15 feet form, or flowing movement, it might be alabas- ; 
ter, or bronze, or marble, — but sadly often it was I 
ice ; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and 
frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it 
could not be put away in the niches of palaces for 
20 ornament and proud family tradition, like the ala- 
baster, or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt, 
and shrink, and fall coldly away in colourless and 
useless water, be absorbed in the earth and utterly 
forgotten. 

25 “But the true sadness was rather in seeing those 
who, not having the spectacles, thought that the 
iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I 
saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave 
and loyal as the crusaders, pursuing, through days 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


99 


and nights, and a long life of devotion, the hope of 
lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire 
in the icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic 
sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, 
the fine scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. 
I watched the grace, the ardour, the glory of devo- 
tion. Through those strange spectacles how often I 
saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all 
other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of 
some one of those statues. 

“ Ah me ! it was terrible, but they had not the love 
to give. The face was so polished and smooth, be- 
cause there was no sorrow in the heart, — and drearily, 
often, no heart to be touched. I could not wonder 
that the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had 
dashed itself against a stone. I wept, until my spec- 
tacles were dimmed, for those hopeless lovers ; but 
there was a pang beyond tears for those icy statues. 

“Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowl- 
edge, — I did not comprehend the sights I was com- 
pelled to see. I used to tear my glasses away from 
my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my 
own consciousness. Reaching the small house where 
we then lived, I plunged into my grandmother’s room, 
and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried my face 
in her lap ; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature 
grief. 

“But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand 
upon my hot forehead, and heard the low sweet song. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


100 


PRUE AND 1 


or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from 
the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could 
not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I 
lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through the 
5 spectacles. 

“Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and 
pensive beauty. Upon the tranquil little islands her 
life had been eventless, and all the fine possibilities 
of her nature were like fiowers that never bloomed. 
10 Placid were all her years ; yet I have read of no hero- 
ine, of no woman great in sudden crises, that it did 
not seem to me she might have been. The wife and 
widow of a man who loved his home better than the 
homes of others, I have yet heard of no queen, no belle, 
15 no imperial beauty, whom in grace, and brilliancy, 
and persuasive courtesy, she might not have surpassed. 

“Madam,” said Titbottom to my wife, whose heart 
hung upon his story ; “ your husband’s young friend, 
Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her hair, and 
20 no diamond in the ball-room seems so costly as that 
perfect flower, which women envy, and for whose 
least and withered petal men sigh ; yet, in the tropical 
solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia bud drops 
from the bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had 
25 it flowered and been noticed, would have gilded all 
hearts with its memory. 

“When I stole these furtive glances at my grand- 
mother, half fearing that they were wrong, I saw 
only a calm lake, whose shores were low, and over 


TITBOTTOM’S SPECTACLES 


101 


which the sun hung unbroken, so that the least star 
was clearly reflected. It had an atmosphere of solemn 
twilight tranquillity, and so completely did its un- 
ruffled surface blend with the cloudless, star-studded 
sky, that, when I looked through my spectacles at my 
grandmother, the vision seemed to me all heaven and 
stars. 

“Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately cities 
might well have been built upon those shores, and have 
flashed prosperity over the calm, like coruscations of 
pearls. I dreamed of gorgeous fleets, silken-s ailed, 
and blown by perfumed winds, drifting over those 
depthless waters and through those spacious skies. I 
gazed upon the twilight, the inscrutable silence, like a 
God-fearing discoverer upon a new and vast sea burst- 
ing upon him through forest glooms, and in the fervour 
of whose impassioned gaze, a millennial and poetic 
world arises, and man need no longer die to be happy. 

“My companions naturally deserted me, for I had 
grown wearily grave and abstracted : and, unable to 
resist the allurements of my spectacles, I was con- 
stantly lost in the world, of which those companions 
were part, yet of which they knew nothing. 

“I grew cold and hard, almost morose; people 
seemed to me so blind and unreasonable. They did 
the wrong thing. They called green, yellow; and 
black, white. Young men said of a girl, ‘What a 
lovely, simple creature ! ’ I looked, and there was 
only a glistening wisp of straw, dry and hollow. Or 


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PRUE AND I 


they said, ‘What a cold, proud beauty!’ I looked, 
and lo I a Madonna, whose heart held the world. 
Or they said, ‘What a wild, giddy girl!’ and I saw 
a glancing, dancing mountain stream, pure as the 
5 virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun 
and shade, over pearls and gold dust, slipping along 
unstained by weed or rain, or heavy foot of cattle, 
touching the flowers with a dewy kiss, — a beam of 
grace, a happy song, a line of light, in the dim and 
10 troubled landscape. 

“My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked 
at the master, and saw that he was a smooth, round 
ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar fraction, and 
refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a 
15 rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. 
But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking 
suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. 

“That one gave me all my schooling. With him 
I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled and 
20 the waves plunged in long legions before us, I looked 
at him through the spectacles, and as his eyes dilated 
with the boundless view, and his chest heaved with 
an impossible desire, I saw Xerxes® and his army, 
tossed and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude upon 
26 multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly advancing, 
and with confused roar of ceaseless music, prostrat- 
ing themselves in abject homage. Or, as with arms 
outstretched and hair streaming on the wind, he chanted 
full lines of the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer pacing 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


103 


the Egean sands of the Greek sunsets of forgotten 
times. 

“My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the 
world without resources, and with no capital but my 
spectacles. I tried to find employment, but every- 
body was shy of me. There was a vague suspicion 
that I was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league 
with the prince of darkness. My companions, who 
would persist in calling a piece of painted muslin, a 
fair and fragrant flower, had no difficulty; success 
waited for them around every corner, and arrived in 
every ship. 

“ I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if any- 
thing excited a suspicion of my pupils, and putting 
on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, 
or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up 
in horror and ran away ; or, if it seemed to me through 
the glasses, that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose 
was blooming in my buttonhole, then I felt myself 
imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading and training 
what was so essentially superior to myself, and I kissed 
the children and left them weeping and wondering. 

“ In despair I went to a great merchant on the island, 
and asked him to employ me. 

“^My dear young friend,’ said he, ‘I understand 
that you have some singular secret, some charm, or 
spell, or amulet, or something, I don’t know what, 
of which people are afraid. Now you know, my dear,’ 
said the merchant, swelling up, and apparently prouder 


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of his great stomach than of his large fortune, ‘I am 
not of that kind. I am not easily frightened. You 
may spare yourself the pain of trying to impose upon 
me. People who propose to come to time before I 
5 arrive, are accustomed to arise very early in the morn- , 
ing,’ said he, thrusting his thumbs in the armholes 
of his waistcoat, and spreading the fingers like two 
fans, upon his bosom. ‘ I think I have heard something | 
of your secret. You have a pair of spectacles, I believe, i 
10 that you value very much, because your grandmother j 
brought them as a marriage portion to your grand- j 
father. Now, if you think fit to sell me those spectacles, 

I will pay you the largest market price for them. What 
do you say ? ’ 

15 “I told him I had not the slightest idea of selling* 
my spectacles. 

“‘My young friend means to eat them, I suppose,' 
said he, with a contemptuous smile. 

“ I made no reply, but was turning to leave the office, 

20 when the merchant called after me : 

“‘My young friend, poor people should never suffer 
themselves to get into pets. Anger is an expensive 
luxury, in v/hich only men of a certain income can 
indulge. A pair of spectacles and a hot temper are 
25 not the most promising capital for success in life. 
Master Titbottom.’ 

“ I said nothing, but put my hand upon the door to 
go out, when the merchant said, more respectfully : 

“‘Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell your 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


105 


spectacles, perhaps you will agree to sell the use of 
them to me. That is, you shall only put them on 
when I direct you, and for my purposes. Hallo ! you 
little fool ! ’ cried he, impatiently, as he saw that I 
intended to make no reply. 

“But I had pulled out my spectacles and put them 
on for my own purposes, and against his wish and 
desire. I looked at him, and saw a huge, bald-headed 
wild boar, with gross chaps and a leering eye — only 
the more ridiculous for the high-arched, gold-bowed 
spectacles, that straddled his nose. One of his fore- 
hoofs was thrust into the safe, where his bills receiv- 
able were hived, and the other into his pocket, among 
the loose change and bills there. His ears were pricked 
forward with a brisk, sensitive smartness. In a world 
where prize pork was the best excellence, he would 
have carried off all the premiums. 

“ I stepped into the next- office in the street, and a 
mild-faced, genial man, also a large and opulent mer- 
chant, asked me my business in such a tone, that I 
instantly looked through my spectacles, and saw a 
land flowing with milk and honey. There I pitched 
my tent, and stayed till the good man died, and his 
business was discontinued. 

“But while there,” said Titbottom, and his voice 
trembled away into a sigh, “ I first saw Preciosa. 
Despite the spectacles, I saw Preciosa. For days, 
for weeks, for months, I did not take my spectacles 
with me. I ran away from them, I threw them up 


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PRUE AND I 


on high shelves, I tried to make up my mind to throw 
them into the sea, or down the well. I could not, I 
would not, I dared not, look at Preciosa through the 
spectacles. It was not possible for'^me deliberately 
5 to destroy them ; but I awoke in the night, and could 
almost have cursed my dear old grandfather for his gift. 

“I sometimes escaped from the office, and sat for 
whole days with Preciosa. I told her the strange 
things I had seen with my mystic glasses. The hours 
10 were not enough for the wild romances which I raved 
in her ear. She listened, astonished and appalled. 
Her blue eyes turned upon me with sweet depreca- 
tion. She clung to me, and then withdrew, and fled 
fearfully from the room. 

15 ‘‘But she could not stay away. She could not re- 
sist my voice, in whose tones burnt all the love that 
filled my heart and brain. The very effort to resist 
the desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else, gave 
a frenzy and an unnatural tension to my feeling and 
20 my manner. I sat by her side, looking into her eyes, 
smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart, which 
was sunken deep and deep — why not for ever ? — 
in that dream of peace. I ran from her presence, and 
shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat the whole night 
25 through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her 
love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, 
and answering the airiest sigh of the ffieeze with music. 

“ Then came calmer days — the conviction of deep 
love settled upon our lives — as after the hurrying. 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


107 


heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant 
summer. 

“ ‘ It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,’ 
I said to her, one day ; and there came no answer, for 
happiness is speechless. 

“‘We are happy, then,’ I said to myself, ‘there is 
no excitement now. How glad I am that I can now 
look at her through my spectacles.’ 

“I feared lest some instinct should warn me to be- 
ware. I escaped from her arms, and ran home and 
seized the glasses, and bounded back again to Preciosa. 
As I entered the room I was heated, my head was 
swimming with confused apprehensions, my eyes must 
have glared. Preciosa was frightened, and rising from 
her seat, stood with an inquiring glance of surprise in 
her eyes. 

“But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose. 
I was merely aware that she was in the room. I saw 
nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for nothing, 
but to see her through that magic glass, and feel at 
once all the fulness of blissful perfection which that 
would reveal. Preciosa stood before the mirror, but 
alarmed at my wild and eager movements, unable to 
distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me 
raise them suddenly to my face, she shrieked with 
terror, and fell fainting upon the floor, at the very 
moment that I placed the glasses before my eyes, and 
beheld — myself, reflected in the mirror, before which 
she had been standing. 


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PRUE AND 1 


'' Dear madam,” cried Titbottom, to my wife, spring- 
ing up and falling back again in his chair, pale and 
trembling, while Prue ran to him and took his hand, 
and I poured out a glass of water — “I saw myself.” 

5 There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid 
her hand gently upon the head of our guest, w^hose 
eyes were closed, and who breathed softly like an 
infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of 
anguish since that hour, no tender hand had touched 
10 his brow, nor wiped away the damps of a bitter sor- 
row. Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers of my 
wife soothed his weary head with the conviction that 
he felt the hand of his mother playing with the long 
hair of her boy in the soft West India morning. Per- 
15 haps it was only the natural relief of expressing a pent- 
up sorrow. 

When he spoke again, it was with the old subdued 
tone, and the air of quaint solemnity. 

“These things were matters of long, long ago, and 
20 1 came to this country soon after. I brought with 
me, premature age, a past of melancholy memories, 
and the magic spectacles. I had become their slave. 
I had nothing more to fear. Having seen myself, I 
was compelled to see others, properly to understand 
25 my relations to them. The lights that cheer the 
future of other men had gone out for me ; my eyes 
were those of an exile turned backwards upon the 
receding shore, and not forwards with hope upon the 
ocean. 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


109 


I mingled with men, but with little pleasure. 
There are but many varieties of a few types. I did 
not find those I came to clearer-sighted than those 
I had left behind. I heard men called shrewd and 
wise, and report said they were highly intelligent 5 
and successful. My finest sense detected no aroma 
of purity and principle ; but I saw only a fungus 
that had fattened and spread in a night. They went 
to the theatres to see actors upon the stage. I went 
to see actors in the boxes, so consummately cunning, 10 
that others did not know they were acting, and they 
did not suspect it themselves. 

Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misan- 
thropical. My dear friends, do not forget that I 
had seen myself. That made me compassionate, not 15 
cynical. 

‘‘Of course, I could not value highly the ordinary 
standards of success and excellence. When I went 
to church and saw a thin, blue, artificial flower, or 
a great sleepy cushion expounding the beauty of holi-20 
ness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles, and three- 
pences, however adroitly concealed they might be in 
broadcloth and boots : or saw an onion in an Easter 
bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen, I did not 
feel as they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety 25 
but piety. 

“Or when at public meetings an eel stood up on 
end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direc- 
tion, and declared that, for his part, he went in for 


110 


PRUE AND 1 


rainbows and hotwater — how could I help seeing 
that he was still black and loved a slimy pool ? 

“I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in 
the eyes of so many who were called old, the gushing 
5 fountains of eternal youth, and the light of an im- 
mortal dawn, or when I saw those who were esteemed 
unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace 
and plenty, either in their own hearts, or in another’s 
— a realm and princely possession for which they had 
10 well renounced a hopeless search and a belated triumph. 

“I knew one man who had been for years a by- 
word for having sought the philosopher’s stone. But 
I looked at him through the spectacles and saw a 
satisfaction in concentrated energies, and a tenacity 
15 arising from devotion to a noble dream which was 
not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aim- 
less effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen 
who cracked their thin jokes upon him over a gossip- 
ing dinner. 

20 “And there was your neighbour over the way, who 
passes for a woman who has failed in her career, be- 
cause she is an old maid. People wag solemn heads 
of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in 
not marrying the brilliant and famous man who was 
25 for long years her suitor. It is clear that no orange 
flower will ever bloom for her. The young people 
make their tender romances about her as they watch 
her, and think of her solitary hours of bitter regret 
and wasting longing, never to be satisfied. 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


111 


“ When I first came to town I shared this sympathy, 
and pleased my imagination with fancying her hard 
struggle with the conviction that she had lost all that 
made life beautiful. I supposed that if I had looked 
at her through my spectacles, I should see that it was 5 
only her radiant temper which so illuminated her dress, 
that we did not see it to be heavy sables. 

“But when, one day, I did raise my glasses, and 
glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom we 
all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman whose 10 
nature was a tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds 
sang, and flowers bloomed for ever. There were no 
regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but a calm sweet- 
ness, a transparent peace. I saw her blush when that 
old lover passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it 16 
was only the sign of delicate feminine consciousness. 
She knew his love, and honoured it, although she 
could not understand it nor return it. I looked closely 
at her, and I saw that although all the world had ex- 
claimed at her indifference to such homage, and had 20 
declared it was astonishing she should lose so fine a 
match, she would only say simply and quietly : 

“‘If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, 
how could I marry him V 

“ Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, 26 
and dignity, and simplicity ? 

“You may believe that I was especially curious to 
look at thut old lover of hers, through my glasses. He 
was no longer young, you know, when I came, and his 


112 


PRUE AND I 


fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have heard 
of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy 
to be loved. He had the easy manner of a man of the 
world, the sensitive grace of a poet, and the charitable 
5 judgment of a wide traveller. He was accounted the 
most successful and most unspoiled of men. Hand- 
some, brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, 
rich, and famous, I looked at him, without the spec- 
tacles, in surprise and admiration, and wondered how 
10 your neighbour over the way had been so entirely un- 
touched by his homage. I watched their intercourse 
in society, I saw her gay smile, her cordial greeting; 
I marked his frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their 
manner told no tales. The eager world was baulked, 
15 and I pulled out my spectacles. 

“I had seen her already, and now I saw him. He 
lived only in memory, and his memory was a spacious 
and stately palace. But he did not oftenest frequent 
the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality 
20 and feasting, — nor did he loiter much in the reception 
rooms, where a throng of new visitors was for ever 
swarming, — nor did he feed his vanity by haunting 
the apartment in which were stored the trophies of 
his varied triumphs, — nor dream much in the great 
25 gallery hung with pictures of his travels. 

“From all these lofty halls of memory he constantly 
escaped to a remote and solitary chamber, into which 
no one had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes, be- 
hind the glasses, followed and entered with him, and 


TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 


113 


saw that the chamber was a chapel. It was dim, and 
silent, and sweet with perpetual incense that burned 
upon an altar before a picture for ever veiled. There, 
whenever I chanced to look, I saw him kneel and pray ; 
and there, by day and by night, a funeral hymn was 
chanted. 

“I do not believe you will be surprised that I have 
been content to remain a deputy book-keeper. My 
spectacles regulated my ambition, and I early learned 
that there were better gods than Plutus.° The glasses 
have lost much of their fascination now, and I do 
not often use them. But sometimes the desire is 
irresistible. Whenever I am greatly interested, I am 
compelled to take them out and see what it is that I 
admire. 

And yet — and yet,” said Titbottom, after a pause, 

am not sure that I thank my grandfather.” 

Prue had long since laid away her work, and had 
heard every word of the story. I saw that the dear 
woman had yet one question to ask, and had been 
earnestly hoping to hear something that would spare 
her the necessity of asking. But Titbottom had re- 
sumed his usual tone, after the momentary excite- 
ment, and made no further allusion to himself. We 
all sat silently; Titbottom’s eyes fastened musingly 
upon the carpet, Prue looking wistfully at him, and I 
regarding both. 

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. 
He shook hands quietly, made his grave Spanish bow 

I 


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PRUE AND I 


to Prue, and, taking his hat, went towards the front 
door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw in her 
eyes that she would ask her question. And as Tit- 
bottom opened the door, I heard the low words : 

6 “ And Preciosa ? ” 

Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door, 
and the moonlight streamed over him as he stood, 
turning back to us. 

“I have seen her but once since. It was in church, 
10 and she was kneeling, with her eyes closed, so that 
she did not see me. But I rubbed the glasses well, 
and looked at her, and saw a white lily, whose stem 
was broken, but which was fresh, and luminous, and 
fragrant still.” 

15 “ That was a miracle,” interrupted Prue. 

“Madam, it was a miracle,” replied Titbottom, 
“ and for that one sight I am devoutly grateful for my 
grandfather’s gift. I saw, that although a flower 
may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it m^y 
20 still bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven.” 

The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue 
put her arm in mine, and we went up-stairs together, 
she whispered in my ear : 

“How glad T am that you don’t wear spectacles.” 


A CRUISE IN THE ‘FLYING DUTCHMAN’® 


“When I sailed : when I sailed.” 

Ballad of Robert Kidd. 

With the opening of spring my heart opens. My 
fancy expands with the flowers, and, as I walk down 
town in the May morning, toward the dingy count- 
ing-room, and the old routine, you would hardly 
believe that I would not change my feelings for those 
of the French Barber-Poet Jasmin,® who goes, merrily 
singing, to his shaving and hair-cutting. 

The first warm day puts the whole winter to flight. 
It stands in front of the summer like a young warrior 
before his host, and, single-handed, defies and destroys 
its remorseless enemy. 

I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the 
earliest breath of summer. 

“ The brave young David has hit old Goliath square 
in the forehead this morning,” I say to Prue, as I 
lean out, and bathe in the soft sunshine. 

My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not 
quite disentangled from her dreams, thinks I am 
speaking of a street-brawl, and replies that I had 
better take care of my own head. 

“Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose,” 
115 


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PRUE AND I 


I answer gaily, turning round to make her one of 
Titbottom’s bows. 

“But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer 
wardrobe?’’ 

6 Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two months 
of winter yet, and I had better stop and order some 
more coal as I go down town. 

“Winter — coal!” 

Then I step back, and taking her by the arm, lead : 
10 her to the window. I throw it open even wider than 
before. The sunlight streams on the great church- 
towers opposite, and the trees in the neighbouring 
square glisten, and wave their boughs gently, as if 
they would burst into leaf before dinner. Cages are 
15 hung at the open chamber-windows in the street, and ! 
the birds, touched into song by the sun, make Mem- 
non° true. Prue’s purple and white hyacinths are in 
full blossom, and perfume the warm air, so that the 
canaries and the mocking birds are no longer aliens 
20 in the city streets, but are once more swinging in ' 
their spicy native groves. 

A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, listening 
and looking. Cuba and the Tropics are in the air. 
The drowsy tune of a hand-organ rises from the 
25 square, and Italy comes singing in upon the sound. 
My triumphant eyes meet Prue’s. They are full of 
sweetness and spring. 

“ What do you think of the summer-wardrobe 
now?” I ask, and we go down to breakfast. 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


117 


I But the air has magic in it, and I do not cease to 
dream. If I meet Charles, who is bound for Alabama, 
or John, who sails for Savannah, with a trunk full of 
white jackets, I do not say to them, as their other 
friends say : 5 

“Happy travellers, who cut March and April out 
of the dismal year !” 

I do not envy them. They will be sea-sick on the 
I way. The southern winds will blow all the water 
out of the rivers, and, desolately stranded upon mud, lo 
they will relieve the tedium of the interval by tying 
with large ropes a young gentleman raving with 
delirium tremens. They will hurry along, appalled 
by forests blazing in the windy night; and, housed 
in a bad inn, they will find themselves anxiously 15 
asking, “Are the cars punctual in leaving?’’ — grimly 
sure that impatient travellers find all conveyances 
too slow. The travellers are very warm, indeed, 
even in March and April, — but Prue doubts if it is 
altogether the effect of the southern climate. 20 

Why should they go to the South? If they only 
wait a little, the South will come to them. Savannah 
arrives in April; Florida in May; Cuba and the Gulf 
come in with June, and the full splendour of the 
Tropics bums through July and August. Sitting 25 
upon the earth, do we not glide by all the constella- 
tions, all the awful stars? Does not the flash of 
Orion’s® scimeter dazzle as we pass ? Do we not hear, 
as we gaze in hushed midnights, the music of the 


118 


PRUE AND I 


Lyre are we not throned with Cassiopeia f do we not 
play with the tangles of Berenice’s® hair, as we sail, 
as we sail ? 

When Christopher told me that he was going to 
6 Italy, I went into Bourne’s conservatory, saw a 
magnolia, and so reached Italy before him. Can 
Christopher bring Italy home ? But I brought to 
Prue a branch of magnolia blossoms, with Mr. 
Bourne’s kindest regards, and she put them upon 
10 her table, and our little house smelled of Italy for a 
week afterward. The incident developed Prue’s 
Italian tastes, which I had not suspected to be so 
strong. I found her looking very often at the mag- 
nolias ; even holding them in her hand, and standing 
15 before the table with a pensive air. I suppose she 
was thinking of Beatrice Cenci,® or of Tasso® and 
Leonora,® or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or of some 
other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe. 
So easily Prue went to Italy ! 

20 Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in 
the air, and leaps along my veins as well as through 
the trees. I immediately travel. An orange takes 
me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to 
Psestum.® The camelias in Aurelia’s hair bring Brazil 
25 into the happy rooms she treads, and she takes me 
to South America as she goes to dinner. The pearls 
upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf. 
Upon her shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his 
carpet, I am transported to the vales of Cashmere;® 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


119 


! and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring days, 
1 go round the world. 

! But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that 
could only be satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds 
were real, and I could stroll among the towering 
: splendours of a sultry spring evening. Ah ! if I could 
leap those flaming battlements that glow along the 
[west — if I could tread those cool, dewy, serene isles 
cf sunset, and sink with them in the sea of stars. 

I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles. 

‘‘But why is it so impossible,” I ask, “if you go 
to Italy upon a magnolia branch?” 

The smile fades from her eyes. 

“I went a shorter voyage than that,” she answered; 
“it was only to Mr. Bourne’s.” 

I walked slowly out of the house, and overtook 
Titbottom as I went. He smiled gravely as he greeted 
me, and said : 

“I have been asked to invite you to join a little 
pleasure party.” 

“Where is it going?” 

“Oh! anywhere,” answered Titbottom. 

“And how?” 

“Oh! anyhow,” he replied. 

“You mean that everybody is to go wherever he 
pleases, and in the way he best can. My dear Tit- 
bottom, I have long belonged to that pleasure party, 
although I never heard it called by so pleasant a name 
before,” 


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PRUE AND I 


My companion said only : 

“If you would like to join, I will introduce you to 
the party. I cannot go, but they are all on board.” 

I answered nothing ; but Titbottom drew me along. 
6 We took a boat, and put off to the most extraor- 
dinary craft I had ever seen. We approached her 
stern, and, as I curiously looked at it, I could think 
of nothing but an old picture that hung in my father’s 
house. It was of the Flemish school, and represented 
10 the rear view of the vrouw° of a burgomaster going to 
market. The wide yards were stretched like elbows, 
and even the studding-sails were spread. The hull 
was seared and blistered, and, in the tops, I saw 
what I supposed to be strings of turnips or cabbages, 
15 little round masses, with tufted crests ; but Titbottom 
assured me they were sailors. 

We rowed hard, but came no nearer the vessel. 

“ She is going with the tide and wind,” said I : 
“we shall never catch her.” 

20 My companion said nothing. 

“But why have they set the studding-sails?” 
asked I. 

“She never takes in any sails,” answered Titbottom. 

“The more fool she,” thought I, a little impatiently, 
25 angry at not getting nearer to the vessel. But I 
did not say it aloud. I would as soon have said it to 
Prue as to Titbottom. The truth is, I began to feel 
a little ill, from the motion of the boat, and remembered, 
with a shade of regret, Prue and peppermint. If wives 


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could only keep their husbands a little nauseated, I am 
confident they might be very sure of their constancy. 

But, somehow, the strange ship was gained, and 
I found myself among as singular a company as I 
have ever seen. There were men of every country, 5 
and costumes of all kinds. There was an indescrib- 
able mistiness in the air, or a premature twilight, 
in which all the figures looked ghostly and unreal. 
The ship was of a model such as I had never seen, 
and the rigging had a musty odour, so that the whole 10 
craft smelled like a ship-chandler’s shop grown 
mouldy. The figures glided rather than walked about, 
and I perceived a strong smell of cabbage issuing 
from the hold. 

But the most extraordinary thing of all was the 15 
sense of resistless motion which possessed my mind 
the moment my foot struck the deck. I could have 
sworn we were dashing through the water at the 
rate of twenty knots an hour. (Prue has a great, 
but a little ignorant, admiration of my technical 20 
knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked 
aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and 
I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, 
but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it 
came from the creak of cordage in the ships of 25 
Crusaders ; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish 
main, echoing through remote years — so far away it 
sounded. 

Yet I heard no orders given; I saw no sailors 


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PRUE AND I 


running aloft, and only one figure crouching over 
the wheel. He was lost behind his great beard as 
behind a snow-drift. But the startling speed with 
which we scudded along did not lift a solitary hair 
5 of that beard, nor did the old and withered face of 
the pilot betray any curiosity or interest as to what 
breakers, or reefs, or pitiless shores, might be lying 
in ambush to destroy us. 

Still on we swept; and as the traveller in a night- 
10 train knows that he is passing green fields, and 
pleasant gardens, and winding streams fringed with 
flowers, and is now gliding through tunnels or dart- 
ing along the base of fearful cliffs, so I was conscious 
that we were pressing through various climates and 
15 by romantic shores. In vain I peered into the gray 
twilight mist that folded all. I could only see the 
value figures that grew and faded upon the haze, as 
my eye fell upon them, like the intermittent charac- 
ters of sympathetic ink when heat touches them. 

20 Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in which 
we sailed, and then cold as the breath of a polar 
ocean. The perfume of new-mown hay and the 
breath of roses, came mingled with the distant music 
of bells, and the twittering song of birds, and a low 
25 surf-like sound of the wind in summer woods. There 
were all sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil 
landscape such as Prue loves — and which shall be 
painted as the background of her portrait whenever 
she sits to any of my many artist friends — and that 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


123 


pastoral beauty shall be called England: I strained 
my eyes into the cruel mist that held all that music 
and all that suggested beauty, but I could see nothing. 

It was so sweet that I scarcely knew if I cared to see. 
The very thought of it charmed my senses and satis- 5 
fied my heart. I smelled and heard the landscape 
that I could not see. 

Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of blos- 
soming vineyards was wafted across the air ; the 
flowery richness of orange groves, and the sacred 10 
odour of crushed bay leaves, such as is pressed from 
them when they are strewn upon the flat pavement 
of the streets of Florence, and gorgeous priestly pro- 
cessions tread them under foot. A steam of incense 
filled the air. I smelled Italy — as in the magnolia 15 
from Bourne’s garden — and, even while my heart 
leaped with the consciousness, the odour passed, and 
a stretch of burning silence succeeded. 

It was an oppressive zone of heat — oppressive not 
only from its silence, but from the sense of awful, 20 
antique forms, whether of art or nature, that were 
sitting, closely veiled, in that mysterious obscurity. 

I shuddered as I felt that if my eyes could pierce 
that mist, or if it should lift and roll away, I should 
see upon a silent shore low ranges of lonely hills, or 26 
mystic figures and huge temples trampled out of 
history by time. 

This, too, we left. There was a rustling of distant 
palms, the indistinct roar of beasts, and the hiss of 


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PRUE AND I 


serpents. Then all was still again. Only at times 
the remote sigh of the weary sea, moaning around 
desolate isles undiscovered; and the howl of winds 
that had never wafted human voices, but had rung 
6 endless changes upon the sound of dashing waters, 
made the voyage more appalling and the figures 
around me more fearful. 

As the ship plunged on through all the varying 
zones, as climate and country drifted behind us, 
10 unseen in the gray mist, but each, in turn, making 
that quaint craft England or Italy, Africa and the 
Southern seas, I ventured to steal a glance at the motley 
crew, to see what impression this wild career pro- 
duced upon them. 

15 They sat about the deck in a hundred listless 
postures. Some leaned idly over the bulwarks, and 
looked wistfully away from the ship, as if they 
fancied they saw all that I inferred but could not see. 
As the perfume, and sound, and climate changed, I 
20 could see many a longing eye sadden and grow moist, 
and as the chime of bells echoed distinctly like the 
airy syllables of names, and, as it were, made pictures 
in music upon the minds of those quaint mariners — 
then dry lips moved, perhaps to name a name, per- 
25 haps to breathe a prayer. Othets sat upon the deck, 
vacantly smoking pipes that required no refilling, but 
had an immortality of weed and fire. The more they 
smoked the more mysterious they became. The 
smoke made the mist around them more impene- 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


125 


trable, and I could clearly see that those distant 
sounds gradually grew more distant, and, by some 
of the most desperate and constant smokers, were 
heard no more. The faces of such had an apathy, 
which, had it been human, would have been despair. 5 
Others stood staring up into the rigging, as if 
calculating when the sails must needs be rent and the 
voyage end. But there was no hope in their eyes, 
only a bitter longing. Some paced restlessly up 
and down the deck. They had evidently been walk- lo 
ing a long, long time. At intervals they, too, threw 
a searching glance into the mist that enveloped the ship, 
and up into the sails and rigging that stretched over 
them in hopeless strength and order. 

'One of the promenaders I especially Dticed. His is 
beard was long and snowy, like that of t 3 pilot. He 
had a staff in his hand, and his movement was very 
rapid. His body swung forward, as if to avoid some- 
thing, and his glance half turned back over his shoulder, 
apprehensively, as if he were threatened from behind. 20 
The head and the whole figure were bowed as if under 
a burden, although I could not see that he had any- 
thing upon his shoulders ; and his gait was not that 
of a man who is walking off the ennui of a voyage, 
but rather of a criminal flying, or of a startled traveller 25 
pursued. 

As he came nearer to me in his walk, I saw that 
his features were strongly Hebrew, and there was an 
air of the proudest dignity, fearfully abased, in his 


126 


PRUE AND I 


mien and expression. It was more than the dignity 
of an individual. I could have believed that the pride 
of a race was humbled in his person. 

His agile eye presently fastened itself upon me, as 
6 a stranger. He came hearer and nearer to me, as he 
paced rapidly to and fro, and was evidently several 
times on the point of addressing me, but, looking 
over his shoulder apprehensively, he passed on. At 
length, with a great effort, he paused for an instant, 
10 and invited me to join him in his walk. Before the 
invitation was fairly uttered, he was in motion again. 
I followed, but I could not overtake him. He kept 
just before me, and turned occasionally with an air 
of terror, as if he fancied I were dogging him ; then 
16 glided on more rapidly. 

His face was by no means agreeable, but it had 
an inexplicable fascination, as if it had been turned 
upon what no other mortal eyes had ever seen. Yet 
I could hardly tell whether it were, probably, an 
20 object of supreme beauty or of terror. He looked 
at everything as if he hoped its impression might 
obliterate some anterior and awful one ; and I was 
gradually possessed with the unpleasant idea that his 
eyes were never closed — that, in fact, he never slept. 
26 Suddenly, fixing me with his unnatural, wakeful 
glare, he whispered something which I could not 
understand, and then darted forward even more 
rapidly, as if he dreaded that, in merely speaking, he 
had lost time. 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


127 


Still the ship drove on, and I walked hurriedly 
^ along the deck, just behind my companion. But 
our speed and that of the ship contrasted strangely 
^ with the mouldy smell of old rigging, and the list- 
j less and lazy groups, smoking and leaning on the 
^ bulwarks. The seasons, in endless succession and 
® iteration, passed over the ship. The twilight was 
^ summer haze at the stern, while it was the fiercest 
’ winter mist at the bows. But as a tropical breath, 
^ like the warmth of a Syrian day, suddenly touched 
■ the brow of my companion, he sighed, and I could 
not help saying : 

^ “You must be tired.” 

* He only shook his head and quickened his pace. 
But now that I had once spoken, it was not so difficult 
to speak, and I asked him why he did not stop and 
rest. 

' He turned for a moment, and a mournful sweetness 
' shone in his dark eyes and haggard, swarthy face. 

‘ It played flittingly around that strange look of ruined 
human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset about 
’ a crumbling and forgotten temple. He put his hand 
’ hurriedly to his forehead, as if he were trying to 
remember — like a lunatic, who, having heard only 
the wrangle of fiends in his delirium, suddenly, in a 
conscious moment, perceives the familiar voice of 
love. But who could this be, to whom mere human 
sympathy was so startlingly sweet? 

Still moving, he whispered with a woeful sadness. 


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PRUE AND I 


“I want to stop, but I cannot. If I could only stop 
long enough to leap over the bulwarks I” 

Then he sighed long and deeply, and added, “But 
I should not drown.” 

5 So much had my interest been excited by his face 
and movement, that I had not observed the costume 
of this strange being. He wore a black hat upon his 
head. It was not only black, but it was shiny. Even 
in the midst of this wonderful scene, I could observe 
10 that it had the artificial newness of a second-hand 
hat; and, at the same moment, I was disgusted by 
the odour of old clothes — very old clothes, indeed. 
The mist and my sympathy had prevented my seeing 
before what a singular garb the figure wore. It was 
16 all second-hand and carefully ironed, but the gar- 
ments were obviously collected from every part of the 
civilized globe. Good heavens ! as I looked at the 
coat, I had a strange sensation. I was sure that I 
had once worn that coat. It was my wedding surtout 
20 — long in the skirts — which Prue had told me, years 
and years before, she had given away tc the neediest 
Jew beggar she had ever seen. 

The spectral figure dwindled in my fancy — the 
features lost their antique grandeur, and the restless 
25 eye ceased to be sublime from immortal sleeplessness, 
and became only lively with mean cunning. The 
apparition was fearfully grotesque, but the driving 
ship and the mysterious company gradually restored 
its tragic interest. I stopped and leaned against the 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


129 


side, and heard the rippling water that I could not 
see, and flitting through the mist, with anxious speed, 
the figure held its way. What was he flying ? What 
conscience with relentless sting pricked this victim 
on ? 

He came again nearer and nearer to me in his walk. 
I recoiled with disgust, this time, no less than terror. 
But he seemed resolved to speak, and, finally, each 
time, as he passed me, he asked single questions, as 
a ship which fires whenever it can bring a gun to 
bear. 

‘'Can you tell me to what port we are bound?” 

“No,” I replied; “but how came you to take 
passage without inquiry ? To me it makes little 
difference.” 

“Nor do I care,” he answered, when he next came 
near enough ; “ I have already been there.” 

“Where?” asked I. 

“Wherever we are going,” he replied. “I have 
been there a great many times, and, oh ! I am very 
tired of it.” 

“ But why are you here at all, then ; and why don’t 
you stop?” 

There was a singular mixture of a hundred con- 
flicting emotions in his face, as I spoke. The repre- 
sentative grandeur of a race, which he sometimes 
showed in his look, faded into a glance of hopeless 
and puny despair. His eyes looked at me curiously, 

! his chest heaved, and there was clearly a struggle in 


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15 

20 

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PRUE AND I 


his mind, between some lofty and mean desire. At 
times, I saw only the austere suffering of ages in his 
strongly-carved features, and again I could see 
nothing but the second-hand black hat above them. 

5 He rubbed his forehead with his skinny hand; he 
glanced over his shoulder, as if calculating whether 
he had time to speak to me ; and then, as a splendid 
defiance flashed from his piercing eyes, so that I 
know how Milton’s Satan® looked, he said, bitterly, 
10 and with hopeless sorrow, that no mortal voice ever 
knew before : 

“I cannot stop: my woe is infinite, like my sin!” 
— and he passed into the mist. 

But, in a few moments, he reappeared. I could 
15 now see only the hat, which sank more and more 
over his face, until it covered it entirely ; and I heard 
a querulous voice, which seemed to be quarrelling 
with itself, for saying what it was compelled to say, 
so that the words were even more appalling than 
20 what it had said before : 

“Old do’ 1 old do’ 1” 

I gazed at the disappearing figure, in speechless 
amazement, and was still looking, when I was 
tapped upon the shoulder, and, turning round, saw 
25 a German cavalry officer, with a heavy moustache, 
and a dog-whistle in his hand. 

“Most extraordinary man, your friend yonder,” 
said the officer ; “ I don’t remember to have seen 
him in Turkey, and yet I recognize upon his feet 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


131 


the boots that I wore in the great Russian cavalry 
charge, where I individually rode down five hundred 
and thirty Turks, slew seven hundred, at a moderate 
computation, by the mere force of my rush, and, 
taking the seven insurmountable walls of Constanti- 
nople at one clean flying leap, rode straight into the 
seraglio, and, dropping the bridle, cut the sultan’s 
throat with my bridle-hand, kissed the other to the 
ladies of the harem, and was back again within our 
lines and taking a glass of wine with the hereditary 
Grand Duke Generalissimo before he knew that I 
had mounted. Oddly enough, your old friend is now 
sporting the identical boots I wore on that occasion.” 

The cavalry officer coolly curled his moustache 
with his fingers. I looked at him in silence. 

“Speaking of boots,” he resumed, “I don’t re- 
member to have told you of that little incident of 
the Princess of the Crimea’s diamonds. It was 
slight, but curious. I was dining one day with the 
Emperor of the Crimea, who always had a cover 
laid for me at his table, when he said, in great per- 
plexity, ‘Baron, my boy, I am in straits. The Shah 
of Persia has just sent me word that he has pre- 
sented me with two thousand pearl-of-Oman neck- 
laces, and I don’t know how to get them over, the 
duties are so heavy.’ ‘Nothing easier,’ replied I; 
‘I’ll bring them in my boots.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said 
the Emperor of the Crimea. ‘ Nonsense ! yourself,’ 
replied I, sportively ; for the Emperor of the Crimea 


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PRUE AND I 


always gives me my joke ; and so after dinner I went 
over to Persia. The thing was easily enough done. 
I ordered a hundred thousand pairs of boots or so, 
filled them with the pearls ; said at the Custom-house 
5 that they were part of my private wardrobe, and I 
had left the blocks in to keep them stretched, for 
I was particular about my bunions. The officers 
bowed, and said that their own feet were tender, 
upon which I jokingly remarked that I wished their 
10 consciences were, and so in the pleasantest manner 
possible the pearl-of-Oman° necklaces were bowed 
out of Persia, and the Emperor of the Crimea gave me 
three thousand of them as my share. It was no 
trouble. It was only ordering the boots, and 
15 whistling to the infernal rascals of Persian shoe- 
makers to hang for their pay.” 

I could reply nothing to my new acquaintance, 
but I treasured his stories to tell to Prue, and at length 
summoned courage to ask him why he had taken 
20 passage. 

“Pure fun,” answered he, “nothing else under 
the sun. You see, it happened in this way : — I was 
sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar of Lebanon, 
on the very summit of that mountain, when suddenly, 
25 feeling a little warm, I took a brisk dive into the 
Mediterranean. Now I was careless, and got going 
obliquely, and with the force of such a dive I could 
not come up near Sicily, as I had intended, but I 
went clean under Africa, and came out at the Cape 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


133 


of Good Hope, and as Fortune would have it, just 
as this good ship was passing. So I sprang over the 
side, and offered the crew to treat all round if they 
would tell me where I started from. But I suppose 
they had just been piped to grog, for not a mans 
stirred, except your friend yonder, and he only kept 
on stirring.” 

Are you going far?” I asked. 

The cavalry officer looked a little disturbed. “I 
cannot precisely tell,” answered he, ‘‘in fact, I wish lo 
I could;” and he glanced round nervously at the 
strange company. 

“If you should come our way, Prue and I will be 
very glad to see you,” said I, “and I can promise 
you a warm welcome from the children.” 16 

“Many thanks,” said the officer, — and handed me 
his card, upon which I read, Le Baron Munchausen ° 

“I beg your pardon,” said a low voice at my side; 
and, turning, I saw one of the constant smokers — 
a very old man — “I beg your pardon, but can you 20 
tell me where I came from ?” 

“I am sorry to say I cannot,” answered I, as I 
surveyed a man with a very bewildered and wrinkled 
face, who seemed to be intently looking for some- 
thing. 26 

“Nor where I am going?” 

I replied that it was equally impossible. He 
mused a few moments, and then said slowly, “Do 
you know, it is a very strange thing that I have not 


134 


PRUE AND I 


found anybody who can answer me either of those 
questions. And yet I must have come from some- 
where,” said he, speculatively — “yes, and I must 
be going somewhere, and I should really like to know 
6 something about it.” 

“I observe,” said I, “that you smoke a good deal, 
and perhaps you find tobacco clouds your brain a 
little.” 

“Smoke! Smoke!” repeated he, sadly, dwelling 
10 upon the words; “why, it all seems smoke to me;” 
and he looked wistfully around the deck, and I felt 
quite ready to agree with him. 

“May I ask what you are here for,” inquired I; 
“perhaps your health, or business of some kind; 
15 although I was told it was a pleasure party?” 

“That’s just it,” said he; “if I only knew where 
we were going, I might be able to say something 
about it. But where are you going ? ” 

“I am going home as fast as I can,” replied I 
20 warmly, for I began to be very uncomfortable. The 
old man’s eyes half closed, and his mind seemed to 
have struck a scent. 

“ Isn’t that where I was going ? I believe it is ; 
I wish I knew ; I think that’s what it is called. Where 
26 is home?” 

And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud of smoke, 
in which he was quite lost. 

“It is certainly very smoky,” said he. “I came 
on board this ship to go to — in fact, I meant, as I 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


135 


was saying, I took passage for ” He smoked 

silently. “I beg your pardon, but where did you 
say I was going?” 

Out of the mist where he had been leaning over 
the side, and gazing earnestly into the surrounding 
obscurity, now came a pale young man, and put his 
arm in mine. 

“I see,” said he, “that you have rather a general 
acquaintance, and, as you know many persons, per- 
haps you know many things. I am young, you see, 
but I am a great traveller. I have been all over the 
world, and in all kinds of conveyances ; but,” he 
continued, nervously, starting continually, and look- 
ing around, “I haven’t yet got abroad.” 

“Not got abroad, and yet you have been every- 
where?” 

“Oh! yes; I know,” he replied, hurriedly; “but 
I mean that I haven’t yet got away. I travel con- 
stantly, but it does no good — and perhaps you can 
tell me the secret I want to know. I will pay any 
sum for it. I am very rich and very young, and, if 
money cannot buy it, I will give as many years of 
my life as you require.” 

He moved his hands convulsively, and his hair 
was wet upon his forehead. He was very handsome in 
that mystic light, but his eye burned with eagerness, 
and his slight, graceful frame thrilled with the earnest- 
ness of his emotion. The Emperor Hadrian,® who loved 
the boy Antinous,® would have loved the youth. 


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PRUE AND I 


“But what is it that you wish to leave behind?’’ 
said I, at length, holding his arm paternally; “what 
do you wish to escape?” 

He threw his arms straight down by his side, 
6 clenched his hands, and looked fixedly in my eyes. 
The beautiful head was thrown a little back upon 
one shoulder, and the wan face glowed with yearn- 
ing desire and utter abandonment to confidence, so 
that, without his saying it, I knew that he had never 
10 whispered the secret which he was about to impart 
to me. Then, with a long sigh, as if his life were 
exhaling, he whispered, 

“Myself.” 

“Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long 
16 journey.” 

“ I know it,” he replied mournfully ; “ and I cannot 
even get started. If I don’t get off in this ship, I 
fear I shall never escape.” His last words were lost 
in the mist which gradually removed him from my 
20 view. 

“The youth has been amusing you with some of 
his wild fancies, I suppose,” said a venerable man, 
who might have been twin brother of that snowy- 
bearded pilot. “It is a great pity so promising a 
25 young man should be the victim of such vagaries.” 

He stood looking over the side for some time, and 
at length added : 

“ Don’t you think we ought to arrive soon?” 

“Where?” asked I. 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


137 


^‘Why, in Eldorado, of course,’’ answered he. “The 
truth is, I became very tired of that long process to 
find the Philosopher’s Stone,® and, although I was 
just upon the point of the last combination which 
must infallibly have produced the medium, I aban- 
doned it when I heard Orellana’s® account, and found 
that Nature had already done in Eldorado precisely 
what I was trying to do. You see,” continued the 
old man abstractedly, “I had put youth, and love, 
and hope, besides a great many scarce minerals, into 
the crucible, and they all dissolved slowly, and van- 
ished in vapour. It was curious, but they left no 
residuum except a little ashes, which were not strong 
enough to make a lye to cure a lame finger. But, as 
I was saying, Orellana told us about Eldorado just 
in time, and I thought, if any ship would carry me 
there it must be this. But I am very sorry to find 
that any one who is in pursuit of such a hopeless goal 
as that pale young man yonder, should have taken 
passage. It is only age,” he said, slowly stroking his 
white beard, “that teaches us wisdom, and persuades 
us to renounce the hope of escaping ourselves ; and 
just as we are discovering the Philosopher’s Stone, 
relieves our anxiety by pointing the way to Eldorado.” 

“Are we really going there?” asked I, in some 
trepidation. 

“Can there be any doubt of it?” replied the old 
man. “Where should we be going, if not there? 
However, let us summon the passengers and ascertain.” 


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PRUE AND I 


So saying, the venerable man beckoned to the 
various groups that were clustered, ghost-like, in the 
mist that enveloped the ship. They seemed to draw 
nearer with listless curiosity, and stood or sat near 
5 us, smoking as before, or, still leaning on the side, 
idly gazing. But the restless figure who had first 
accosted me, still paced the deck, flitting in and out 
of the obscurity; and as he passed there was the 
same mien of humbled pride, and the air of a fate of 
10 tragic grandeur, and still the same faint odour of old 
clothes, and the low querulous cry, “ Old clo^ ! old 
cloM” 

The ship dashed on. Unknown odours and strange 
sounds still filled the air, and all the world went by us 
15 as we flew, with no other noise than the low gurgling 
of the sea around the side. 

“Gentlemen,” said the reverend passenger for 
Eldorado, “I hope there is no misapprehension as to 
our destination?” 

20 As he said this, there was a general movement of 
anxiety and curiosity. Presently the smoker, who 
had asked me where he was going, said, doubtfully : 

“ I don’t know — it seems to me — I mean I wish 
somebody would distinctly say where we are going.” 

25 “I think I can throw a light upon this subject,” 
said a person whom I had not before remarked. He 
was dressed like a sailor, and had a dreamy eye. “ It 
is very clear to me where we are going. I have been 
taking observations for some time, and I am glad to 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


139 


announce that we are on the eve of achieving great 
fame ; and I may add/’ said he, modestly, “ that my 
own good name for scientific acumen will be amply 
I vindicated. Gentlemen, we are undoubtedly going into 
|| the Hole.” 

‘‘What hole is that?” asked M. le Baron Mun- 
chausen, a little contemptuously. 

“Sir, it will make you more famous than you ever 
, were before,” replied the first speaker, evidently much 
enraged. 

j “I am persuaded we are going into no such absurd 
place,” said the Baron, exasperated. 

The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully angry. 
He drew himself up stiffly and said : 

'“Sir, you lie !” 

M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very good part. 
He smiled and held out his hand : 

“My friend,” said he, blandly, “that is precisely 
what I have always heard. I am glad you do me no 
more than justice. I fully assent to your theory : and 
your words constitute me the proper historiographer 
of the expedition. But tell me one thing, how soon, 
after getting into the Hole, do you think we shall get 
out?” 

“The result will prove,” said the marine gentle- 
man, handing the officer his card, upon which was 
written, Captain Symmes. The two gentlemen then 
walked aside ; and the groups began to sway to and 
fro in the haze as if not quite contented. 


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PRUE AND I 


‘‘Good God/’ said the pale youth, running up to 
me and clutching my arm, “I cannot go into any 
Hole alone with myself. I should die — I should 
kill myself. I thought somebody was on board, and 
5 1 hoped you were he, who would steer us to the foun- 
tain of oblivion.” 

“Very well, that is in the Hole,” said M. le Baron, 
who came out of the mist at that moment, leaning 
upon the Captain’s arm. 

10 “But can I leave myself outside?” asked the youth, 
nervously. 

“Certainly,” interposed the old Alchemist; ‘^you 
may be sure that you will not get into the Hole, until 
you have left yourself behind.” 

15 The pale young man grasped his hand, and gazed 
into his eyes. 

“And then I can drink and be happy,” murmured 
he, as he leaned over the side of the ship, and listened 
to the rippling water, as if it had been the music of the 
20 fountain of oblivion. 

“Drink! drink!” said the smoking old man. 
“ Fountain ! fountain ! Why, I believe that is what 
I am after. I beg your pardon,” continued he, ad- 
dressing the Alchemist. “ But can you tell me if I am 
25 looking for a fountain?” 

“The fountain of youth, perhaps,” replied the 
Alchemist. 

“The very thing!” cried the smoker, with a shrill 
laugh, while his pipe fell from his mouth, and was 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


141 


shattered upon the deck, and the old man tottered 
I away into the mist, chuckling feebly to himself, 
“Youth! youth!’' 

He’ll find that in the Hole, too,” said the Alchemist, 

I as he gazed after the receding figure. 5 

The crowd now gathered more nearly around us. 

“Well, gentlemen,” continued the x\lchemist, “where 
I shall we go, or, rather, where are we going?” 

A man ^n a friar’s habit, with the cowl closely drawn 
i about his head, now crossed himself, and whispered : lo 
“I have but one object. I should not have been 
here if I had not supposed we were going to find Prester 
j John,® to whom I have been appointed father con- 
I fessor, and at whose court I am to live splendidly, like 
1 a ' cardinal at Rome. Gentlemen, if you will only 15 
I agree that we shall go there, you shall all be permitted 
to hold my train when I proceed to be enthroned as 
Bishop of Central Africa.” 

While he was speaking, another old man came from 
the bows of ths ship, a figure which had been so im-20 
movable in its place that I supposed it was the ancient 
figure-head of the craft, and said in a low, hollow voice, 
and a quaint accent : 

“ I have been looking for centuries, and I cannot see 
it. I supposed we were heading for it. I thought 25 
sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires, the sunny 
gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation of purple 
hills. Ah me ! I am sure I heard the singing of birds 
and the faint low of cattle, But I do not know : we 


142 


PRUE AND I 


come no nearer ; and yet I felt its presence in the air. 
If the mist would only lift, we should see it lying so 
fair upon the sea, so graceful against the sky. I fear 
we may have passed it. Gentlemen,” said he, sadly, 
5 “ I am afraid we may have lost the island of Atlantis 
for ever.” 

There was a look of uncertainty in the throng upon 
the deck. 

“But yet,” said a group of young men in every 
10 kind of costume, and of every country and lime, “ we 
have a chance at the Encantadas, the Enchanted 
Islands. We were reading of them only the other 
day, and the very style of the story had the music of 
waves. How happy we shall be to reach a land where 
16 there is no work, nor tempest, nor pain, and we shall 
be for ever happy.” 

“I am content here,” said a laughing youth, with 
heavily matted curls. “What can be better than 
this? We feel every climate, the music and the per- 
20 fume of every zone are ours. In the starlight I woo 
the mermaids, as I lean over the side, and no enchanted 
island will show us fairer forms. I am satisfied. The 
ship sails on. We cannot see but we can dream. 
What work or pain have we here ? I like the ship ; 
26 1 like the voyage ; I like my company, and am con- 
tent.” 

As he spoke he put something into his mouth, and, 
drawing a white substance from his pocket, offered 
it to his neighbour, saying, “Try a bit of this lotus; 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 


143 


you will find it very soothing to the nerves, and an 
infallible remedy for home-sickness.’^ 

“Gentlemen,” said M. le Baron Munchausen, “I 
have no fear. The arrangements are well made ; 
the voyage has been perfectly planned, and each 5 
passenger will discover what he took passage to find, 
in the Hole into which we are going, under the auspices 
of this worthy Captain.” 

He ceased, and silence fell upon the ship’s com- 
pany. Still on we swept ; it seemed a weary way. 10 
The tireless pedestrians still paced to and fro, and 
the idle smokers puffed. The ship sailed on, and 
endless music and odour chased each other through 
the misty air. Suddenly a deep sigh drew universal 
attention to a person who had not yet spoken. He 15 
held a broken harp in his hand, the strings fluttered 
loosely in the air, and the head of the speaker, bound 
with a withered wreath of laurels, bent over it. 

“No, no,” said he, “I will not eat your lotus, nor 
sail into the Hole. No magic root can cure the home- 20 
sickness I feel ; for it is no regretful remembrance, 
but an immortal longing. I have roamed farther than 
I thought the earth extended. I have climbed moun- 
tains ; I have threaded rivers ; I have sailed seas ; 
but nowhere have I seen the home for which my heart 26 
aches. Ah! my friends, you look very weary; let 
us go home.” 

The pedestrian paused a njoment in his walk, and 
the smokers took their pipes from their mouths. The 


144 


PRUE AND 1 


soft air which blew in that moment across the deck, 
drew a low sound from the broken harp-strings, and 
a light shone in the eyes of the old man of the figure- 
head, as if the mist had lifted for an instant, and he 
5 had caught a glimpse of the lost Atlantis. 

“I really believe that is where I wish to go,” said 
the seeker of the fountain of youth. “ I think I would 
give up drinking at the fountain if I could get there. 
I do not know,” he murmured, doubtfully; “it is not 

10 sure; I mean, perhaps, I should not have strength 
to get to the fountain, even if I were near it.” 

“But is it possible to get home?” inquired the pale 
young man. “I think I should be resigned if I could 
get home.” 

15 “Certainly,” said the dry, hard voice of Prester 
John’s confessor, as his cowl fell a little back, and a 
sudden flush burned upon his gaunt face ; “ if there 

is any chance of home, I will give up the Bishop’s 
palace in Central Africa.” 

20 “But Eldorado is my home,” interposed the old 
Alchemist. 

“Or is home Eldorado?” asked the poet, with the 
withered wreath, turning towards the Alchemist. 

It was a strange company and a wondrous voyage. 

25 Here were all kinds of men, of all times and coun- 
tries, pursuing the wildest hopes, the most chimerical 
desires. One took me aside to request that I would 
not let it be known, but that he inferred from certain 
signs we were nearing Utopia.® Another whispered 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 145 

gaily in my ear that he thought the water was grad- 
ually becoming of a ruby colour — the hue of wine ; 
and he had no doubt we should wake in the morning 
and find ourselves in the land of Cockaigne.® A third, 
in great anxiety, stated to me that such continuous 
mists were unknown upon the ocean ; that they were 
peculiar to rivers, and that, beyond question, we were 
drifting along some stream, probably the Nile, and im- 
mediate measures ought to be taken that we did not 
go ashore at the foot of the mountains of the moon. 
Others were quite sure that we were in the way of 
striking the great southern continent; and a young 
man, who gave his name as Wilkins, said we might be 
quite at ease, for presently some friends of his would 
come flying over from the neighbouring islands and 
tell us all we wished. 

Still I smelled the mouldy rigging, and the odour 
of cabbage was strong from the hold. 

0 Prue, what could the ship be, in which such 
fantastic characters were sailing toward impossible 
bournes — characters which in every age have ven- 
tured all the bright capital of life in vague specula- 
tions and romantic dreams? What could it be but 
the ship that haunts the sea for ever, and, with all 
sails set, drives onward before a ceaseless gale, and 
is not hailed, nor ever comes to port? 

1 know the ship is always full; I know the gray- 
beard still watches at the prow for the lost Atlantis, 
and still the alchemist believes that Eldorado is at 

L 


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10 

15 

20 

25 


146 


PRUE AND I 


hand. Upon his aimless quest, the dotard still asks 
where he is going, and the pale youth knows that 
he shall never fly himself. Yet they would gladly 
renounce that wild chase and the dear dreams of years, i 
6 could they find what I have never lost. They were ! 
ready to follow the poet home, if he would have told 
them where it lay. 

I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air of the | 
purple uplands which they shall never tread. I hear 
10 the sweet music of the voices they long for in vain. 

I am no traveller ; my only voyage is to the office and 
home again. William and Christopher, John and | 
Charles sail to Europe and the South, but I defy their i 
romantic distances. When the spring comes and the i 
15 flowers blow, I drift through the year belted with 
summer and with spice. 

With the changing months I keep high carnival 
in all the zones. I sit at home and walk with Prue, 
and if the sun that stirs the sap quickens also the 
20 wish to wander, I remember my fellow- voyagers on 
that romantic craft, and looking round upon my peace- 
ful room, and pressing more closely the arm of Prue, 

I feel that I have reached the port for which they hope- 
lessly sailed. And when winds blow fiercely and the 
25 night-storm rages, and the thought of lost mariners 
and of perilous voyages touches the soft heart of Prue, 

I hear a voice sweeter to my ear than that of the syrens ! 
to the tempest-tost sailor : “ Thank God ! Your only 
cruising is in the ‘Flying Dutchman’ !” 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


“Look here upon this picture, and on this.” 

Hamlet. 

We have no family pictures, Prue and I, only a 
portrait of my grandmother hangs upon our parlour 
wall. It was taken at least a century ago, and ‘repre- 
sents the venerable lady, whom I remember in my 
childhood in spectacles and comely cap, as a young 
and blooming girl. 

She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the 
side of a prim aunt of hers, and with her back to the 
open window. Her costume is quaint, but hand- 
some. It consists of a cream-coloured dress made 
high in the throat, ruffled around the neck, and over 
the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is just under 
her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter than 
any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the wrist. 
Around the plump and rosy neck, which I remember 
as shrivelled and sallow, and hidden under a decent 
lace handkerchief, hangs, in the picture, a necklace 
of large ebony beads. There are two curls upon the 
forehead, and the rest of the hair flows away in ringlets 
down the neck. 


5 

10 

15 

20 


147 


148 


PRUE AND I 


The hands hold an open book: the eyes look up 
from it with tranquil sweetness, and, through the 
open window behind, you see a quiet landscape — a 
hill, a tree, the glimpse of a river, and a few peaceful 
6 summer clouds. 

Often in my younger days, when my grandmother 
sat by the fire, after dinner, lost in thought — perhaps 
remembering the time when the picture was really 
a portrait — I have curiously compared her wasted 
10 face with the blooming beauty of the girl, and tried 
to detect the likeness. It was strange how the re- 
semblance would sometimes start out: how, as I 
gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disappeared 
before my eager glance, as snow melts in the sun- 
15 shine, revealing the flowers of a forgotten spring. 

It was touching to see my grandmother steal quietly 
up to her portrait, on still summer mornings when 
every one had left the house, — and I, the only child, 
played, disregarded, — and look at it wistfully and long. 
20 She held her hand over her eyes to shade them from 
the light that streamed in at the window, and I have 
seen her stand at least a quarter of an hour gazing 
steadfastly at the picture. She said nothing, she 
made no motion, she shed no tear, but when she turned 
25 away there was always a pensive sweetness in her face 
that made it not less lovely than the face of her youth. 

I have learned since, what her thoughts must have 
been — how that long, wistful glance annihilated time 
and space, how forms and faces unknown to any other, 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


149 


rose in sudden resurrection around her — how she 
loved, suffered, struggled and conquered again; how 
many a jest that I shall never hear, how many a game 
that I shall never play, how many a song that I shall 
never sing, were all renewed and remembered as my 
grandmother contemplated her picture. 

I often stand, as she stood, gazing earnestly at the 
picture, so long and so silently, that Prue looks up 
from her work and says she shall be jealous of that 
beautiful belle, my grandmother, who yet makes her 
think more kindly of those remote old times. 

^^Yes, Prue, and that is the charm of a family por- 
trait.” 

“Yes, again; but,” says Titbottom when he hears 
the remark, “ how, if one’s grandmother were a shrew, 
a termagant, a virago?” 

“ Ah ! in that case — ” I am compelled to say, while 
Prue looks up again, half archly, and I add gravely 
. — “you, for instance, Prue.” 

Then Titbottom smiles one of his sad smiles, and 
we change the subject. 

Yet, I am always glad when Minim Sculpin, our 
neighbour, who knows that my opportunities are few, 
comes to ask me to step round and see the family 
portraits. 

The Sculpins, I think, are a very old family. Tit- 
bottom says they date from the deluge. But I thought 
people of English descent preferred to stop with Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, who came from France. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


150 


PRUE AND I 


Before going with Minim, I always fortify myself with 
a glance at the great family Bible, in which Adam, Eve, 
and the patriarchs, are indifferently well represented. 

“ Those are the ancestors of the Howards,® the 
6 Plantagenets,® and the Montmorencis, says Prue, 
surprising me with her erudition. “Have you any 
remoter ancestry, Mr. Sculpin?” she asks Minim, 
who only smiles compassionately upon the dear woman, 
while I am buttoning my coat. 

10 Then we step along the street, and I am conscious 
of trembling a little, for I feel as if I were going to court. 
Suddenly we are standing before the range of portraits. 

“This,” says Minim, with unction, “is Sir Solomon 
Sculpin, the founder of the family.” 

15 “Famous for what?” I ask, respectfully. 

“For founding the family,” replies Minim gravely, 
and I have sometimes thought a little severely. 

“This,” he says, pointing to a dame in hoops and 
diamond stomacher, “this is Lady Sheba Sculpin.” 

20 “Ah! yes. Famous for what?” I inquire. 

“For being the wife of Sir Solomon.” 

Then, in order, comes a gentleman in a huge, curling 
wig, looking indifferently like James the Second, or 
Louis the Fourteenth, and holding a scroll in his hand. 

25 “The Right Honourable Haddock Sculpin, Lord Privy 
Seal, etc., etc.” 

A delicate beauty hangs between, a face fair, and 
loved, and lost, centuries ago — a song to the eye — a 
poem to the heart — the Aurelia of that old society. 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


151 


“Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young Lord 
Pop and Cock, and died prematurely in Ital}^” 

Poor Lady Dorothea ! whose great grandchild, in 
the tenth remove, died last week, an old man of eighty ! 

Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, flourish- 5 
ing a sword, with an anchor embroidered on his coat- 
collar, and thunder and lightning, sinking ships, flames 
and tornadoes in the background. 

“Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell in the 
great action off Madagascar.” 10 

So Minim goes on through the series, brandish- 
ing his ancestors about my head, and incontinently 
knocking me into admiration. 

And when we reach the last portrait and our own 
times, what is the natural emotion ? Is it not to put 15 
Minim against the w^all, draw off at him with my eyes 
and mind, scan him, and consider his life, and deter- 
mine how much of the Right Honourable Haddock’s 
integrity, and the Lady Dorothea’s loveliness, and the 
Admiral Shark’s valour, reappears in the modern man ? 20 
After all this proving and refining, ought not the last 
child of a famous race to be its flower and epitome? 
Or, in the case that he does not chance to be so, is it 
not better to conceal the family name ? 

I am told, however, that in the higher circles of 25 
society, it is better not to conceal the name, however 
unworthy the man or woman may be who bears it. 
Prue once remonstrated with a lady about the mar- 
riage of a lovely young girl with a cousin of Minim’s ; 


152 


PRUE AND I 


but the only answer she received was, *^Well, he may 
not be a perfect man, but then he is a Sculpin,” which 
consideration apparently gave great comfort to the 
lady’s mind. 

6 But even Prue grants that Minim has some reason 
for his pride. Sir Solomon was a respectable man, 
and Sir Shark a brave one; and the Right Honour- 
able Haddock a learned one; the Lady Sheba was 
grave and gracious in her way ; and the smile of the 
10 fair Dorothea lights with soft sunlight those long- 
gone summers. The filial blood rushes more gladly 
from Minim’s heart as he gazes ; and admiration for 
the virtues of his kindred inspires and sweetly mingles 
with good resolutions of his own. 

15 Time has its share, too, in the ministry, and .the 
influence. The hills beyond the river lay yesterday, 
at sunset, lost in purple gloom ; they receded into airy 
distances of dreams and faery ; they sank softly into 
night, the peaks of the delectable mountains. But I 
20 knew, as I gazed enchanted, that the hills, so purple- 
soft of seeming, were hard, and gray, and barren in 
the wintry twilight ; and that in the distance was the 
magic that mad^ them fair. 

So, beyond the river of time that flows between, 
25 walk the brave men and the beautiful women of our 
ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the shore. Dis- 
tance smooths away defects, and, with gentle dark- 
ness, rounds every form into grace. It steals the 
harshness from their speech, and every word becomes 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


153 


a song. Far across the gulf that ever widens, they 
look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and 
which light us to success. We acknowledge our in- 
heritance ; we accept our birthright ; we own that 
their careers have pledged us to noble action. Every 6 
great life is an incentive to all other lives ; but when 
the brave heart, that beats for the world, loves us 
with the warmth of private affection, then the ex- 
ample of heroism is more persuasive, because more 
personal. 10 

This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded 
in the tenderness with which the child regards the 
father, and in the romance that time sheds upon 
history. 

' “ Where be all the bad people buried ? ” asks every 15 
man, with Charles Lamb, as he strolls among the 
rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it aside to read 
of the faithful husband, and the loving wife, and the 
dutiful child. 

He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the 20 
human heart is kind; because it yearns with wistful 
tenderness after all its brethren who have passed into 
the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed. 
No offence is longer an offence when the grass is 
green over the offender. Even faults then seem char- 25 
acteristic and individual. Even Justice is appeased 
when the drop falls. How the old stories and plays 
teem with the incident of the duel in which one gentle- 
man falls, and, in dying, forgives and is forgiven. 


154 


PRUE AND 1 


We turn the page with a tear. How much better had 
there been no offence, but how well that death wipes 
it out. 

It is not observed in history that families improve 
5 with time. It is rather discovered that the whole 
matter is like a comet, of which the brightest part is 
the head; and the tail, although long and luminous, 
is gradually shaded into obscurity. 

Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of an- 
locestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam was 
valiant, and did so well at Poictiers° that he was 
knighted — a hearty, homely, country gentleman, who 
lived humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his 
representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder- 
15 like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and 
humble. Sir Adam’s sword is hung up at home, and 
Lucifer has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he 
has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, the crest of the 
Lucifers. But if he should be at a Poictiers, he would 
20 run away. Then history would be sorry — not only 
for his cowardice, but for the shame it brings upon 
old Adam’s name. 

So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not 
only shames himself, but he disgraces that illustrious 
25 line of ancestors, whose characters are known. His 
neighbour, Mudge, has no pedigree of this kind, and 
when he reels homeward, we do not suffer the sorrow 
of any fair Lady Dorothea in such a descendant — we 
pity him for himself alone. But genius and power 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


155 


are so imperial and universal, that when Minim Scul- 
pin falls, we are grieved not only for him, but for 
that eternal truth and beauty which appeared in the 
valour of Sir Shark, and the loveliness of Lady 
Dorothea. His neighbour Mudge’s grandfather may 
have been quite as valorous and virtuous as Sculpin’s ; 
but we know of the one, and we do not know of the 
other. 

Therefore, Prue,’’ I say to my wife, who has, by 
this time, fallen as soundly asleep as if I had been 
preaching a real sermon, “do not let Mrs. Mudge feel 
hurt, because I gaze so long and earnestly upon the por- 
trait of the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams, 
mingle in a society which distance and poetry im- 
mortalize.” 

But let the love of the family portraits belong to 
poetry and not to politics. It is good in the one way, 
and bad in the other. 

The sentiment of ancestral pride is an integral part 
of human nature. Its organization in institutions is 
the real object of enmity to all sensible men, because 
it is a direct preference of derived to original power, 
implying a doubt that the world at every period is 
able to take care of itself. 

The family portraits have a poetic significance ; 
but he is a brave child of the family who dares to show 
them. They all sit in passionless and austere judg- 
ment upon himself. Let him not invite us to see them, 
until he has considered whether they are honoured 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


156 


PRUE AND I 


or disgraced by his own career — until he has looked 
in the glass of his own thought and scanned his own 
proportions. 

The family portraits are like a woman’s diamonds ; 

5 they may flash finely enough before the world, but 
she herself trembles lest their lustre eclipse her eyes. 
It is difficult to resist the tendency to depend upon 
those portraits, and to enjoy vicariously through 
them a high consideration. But, after all, what girl 
10 is complimented when you curiously regard her be- 
cause her mother was beautiful? What attenuated 
consumptive, in whom self-respect is yet unconsumed, 
delights in your respect for him, founded in honour 
for his stalwart ancestor ? 

15 No man worthy the name rejoices in any homage 
which his own effort and character have not deserved. 
You intrinsically insult him when you make him the 
scapegoat of your admiration for his ancestor. But 
when his ancestor is his accessory, than your homage 
20 would flatter Jupiter. All that Minim Sculpin does 
by his own talent is the more radiantly set and orna- 
mented by the family fame. The imagination is 
pleased when Lord John RusselL is Premier of Eng- 
land and a Whig, because the great Lord William 
25 Russell, ° his ancestor, died in England for liberty. 

In the same way Minim’s sister Sara adds to her 
own grace the sweet memory of the Lady Dorothea. 
When she glides, a sunbeam, through that quiet 
house, and in winter makes summer by her presence; 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


157 


! when she sits at the piano, singing in the twilight, 

! or stands leaning against the Venus in the corner of 
I the room — herself more graceful — then, in glancing 
from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothea, you 
feel that the long years between them have been 5 
lighted by the same sparkling grace, and shadowed 
by the same pensive smile — for this is but one Sara 
and one Dorothea, out of all that there are in the 
world. 

As we look at these two, we must own that noblesse 10 
oblige^ in a sense sweeter than we knew, and be glad 
when young Sculpin invites us to see the family por- 
traits. Could a man be named Sidney, and not be a 
better man, or Milton, and be a churl ? 

But it is apart from any historical association that 15 
I like to look at the family portraits. The Sculpins 
were very distinguished heroes, and judges, and 
founders of families ; but I chiefly linger upon their 
pictures, because they were men and women. Their 
portraits remove the vagueness from history, and give 20 
it reality. Ancient valour and beauty cease to be 
names and poetic myths, and become facts. I feel 
that they lived, and loved, and suffered in those old 
days. The story of their lives is instantly full of 
human sympathy in my mind, and I judge them more 26 
gently, more generously. 

Then I look at those of us who are the spectators 
of the portraits. I know that we are made of the 
same flesh and blood, that time is preparing us to 


158 


PRUE AND I 


be placed in his cabinet and upon canvas, to be curiously 
studied by the grandchildren of unborn Prues. I put 
out my hands to grasp those of my fellows around the 
pictures. “Ah! friends, we live not only for our- 
5 selves. Those whom we shall never see, will look to 
us as models, as counsellors. We shall be speechless 
then. We shall only look at them from the canvas, 
and cheer or discourage them by their idea of our lives 
and ourselves. Let us so look in the portrait, that 
10 they shall love our memories — that they shall say, 
in turn, ‘they were kind and thoughtful, those queer 
old ancestors of ours ; let us not disgrace them.’ ” 

If they only recognize us as men and women like 
themselves, they will be the better for it, and the family 
15 portraits will be family blessings. 

This is what my grandmother did. She looked at 
her own portrait, at the portrait of her youth, with 
much the same feeling that I remember Prue as she 
was when I first saw her ; with much the same feeling 
20 that I hope our grandchildren will remember us. 

Upon those still summer mornings, though she 
stood withered and wan in a plain black silk gown, 
a close cap, and spectacles, and held her shrunken 
and blue-veined hand to shield her eyes, yet, as she 
25 gazed, with that long and longing glance, upon the 
blooming beauty that had faded from her form for 
ever, she recognized under that flowing hair and that 
rosy cheek — the immortal fashions of youth and 
health — and beneath those many ruffles and that 


FAMILY PORTRAITS 


159 


quaint high waist, the fashions of the day — the same 
true and loving woman. If her face was pensive as 
she turned away, it was because truth and love are, 
in their essence, for ever young; and it is the hard 
condition of nature that they cannot always appear so. 5 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


“Why, let the stricken deer go weep,° 

The heart ungalled play ; ] 

For some must watch, while some must sleep ; 

Thus runs the world away.” 

Prue and I have very few relations : Prue, especially, 
says that she never had any but her parents, and that 
she has none now but her children. She often wishes j 
she had some large aunt in the country, who might ’ 
5 come in unexpectedly with bags and bundles, and en- i 
camp in our little house for a whole winter. ! 

“Because you are tired of me, I suppose, Mrs. ) 
Prue?” I reply with dignity, when she alludes to the | 
imaginary large aunt. ; 

10 “You could take aunt to the opera, you know, and ■ 
walk with her on Sundays,” says Prue, as she knits ! 
and calmly looks me in the face, without recognizing 
my observation. 

Then I tell Prue in the plainest possible manner ’ 
15 that, if her large aunt should come up from the country 
to pass the winter, I should insist upon her bringing 
her oldest daughter, with whom I would flirt so des- ! 
perately that the street would be scandalized, and ' 
even the corner grocery should gossip over the iniquity. ' 

160 i 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


161 


"‘Poor Prue, how I should pity you,” I say trium- 
phantly to my wife. 

"‘Poor oldest daughter, how I should pity her,” 
replies Prue, placidly counting her stitches. 

So the happy evening passes, as we gaily mock each 5 
other, and wonder how old the large aunt should be, 
and how many bundles she ought to bring with her. 

“I would have her arrive by the late train at mid- 
night,” says Prue; “and when she had eaten some 
supper and had gone to her room, she should discover lo 
that she had left the most precious bundle of all in 
the cars, without whose contents she could not sleep, 
nor dress, and you would start to hunt for it.” 

And the needle clicks faster than ever. 

“ Yes, and when I am gone to the office in the morn- 15 
ing, and am busy about important affairs — yes, Mrs. 
Prue, important affairs,” I insist, as my wife half 
raises her head incredulously — “then our large aunt 
from the country would like to go shopping, and would 
want you for her escort. And she would cheapen tape 20 
at all the shops, and even to the great Stewart himself, 
she would offer a shilling less for the gloves. Then 
the comely clerks of the great Stewart would look at 
you, with their brows lifted, as if they said, Mrs. Prue, 
your large aunt had better stay in the country.” 25 

And the needle clicks more slowly, as if the tune 
were changing. 

The large aunt will never come, I know ; nor shall 
I ever flirt with the oldest daughter. I should like 

M 


162 


PRUE AND I 


to believe that our little house will teem with aunts 
and cousins when Prue and I are gone ; -but how can I 
^ believe it, when there is a milliner within three doors, 
and a hair-dresser combs his wigs in the late dining- 
5 room of my opposite neighbour? The large aunt 
from the country is entirely impossible, and as Prue 
feels it, and I feel it, the needles seem to click a dirge 
for that late lamented lady. 

“But at least we have one relative, Prue.” 

10 The needles stop : only the clock ticks upon the 
mantel to remind us how ceaselessly the stream of time 
flows on that bears us away from our cousin the curate. 

When Prue and I are most cheerful, and the world 
looks fair — we talk of our cousin the curate. When 
15 the world seems a little cloudy, and we remember that 
though we have lived and loved together, we may 
not die together — we talk of our cousin the curate. 
When we plan little plans for the boys and dream 
dreams for the girls — we talk of our cousin the curate. 
20 When I tell Prue of Aurelia whose character is every 
day lovelier — we talk of our cousin the curate. There 
is no subject which does not seem to lead naturally to 
our cousin the curate. As the soft air steals in and 
envelops everything in the world, so that the trees, 
25 and the hills, and the rivers, the cities, the crops, and 
the sea, are made remote, and delicate, and beautiful, 
by its pure baptism, so over all the events of our little 
lives, comforting, refining, and elevating, falls like a 
benediction the remembrance of our cousin the curate. 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


163 


He was my only early companion. He had no 
brother, I had none : and we became brothers to 
each other. He was always beautiful. His face was 
symmetrical and delicate; his figure was slight and 
graceful. He looked as the sons of kings ought to 
look: as I am sure Philip Sidney® looked when he 
was a boy. His eyes were blue, and as you looked 
at them, they seemed to let your gaze out into a June 
heaven. The blood ran close to the skin, and his com- 
plexion had the rich transparency of light. There 
was nothing gross or heavy in his expression or texture ; 
his soul seemed to have mastered his body. But he 
had strong passions, for his delicacy was positive, not 
negative : it was not weakness, but intensity. 

There was a patch of ground about the house which 
we tilled as a garden. I was proud of my morning- 
glories, and sweet peas ; my cousin cultivated roses. 
One day — and we could scarcely have been more 
than six years old — we were digging merrily and talk- 
ing. Suddenly there was some kind of difference; 
I taunted him, and, raising his spade, he struck me 
upon the leg. The blow was heavy for a boy, and the 
blood trickled from the wound. I burst into indignant 
I tears, and limped toward the house. My cousin turned 
i pale and said nothing, but just as I opened the door, 
he darted by me, and before I could interrupt him, he 
had confessed his crime, and asked for punishment. 

From that day he conquered himself. He devoted 
a kind of ascetic energy to subduing his own will, 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


164 


PRUE AND 1 


and I remember no other outbreak. But the penalty 
he paid for conquering his will was a loss of the gush- 
ing expression of feeling. My cousin became per- 
fectly gentle in his manner, but there was a want of 
5 that pungent excess, which is the finest flavour of 
character. His views were moderate and calm. He 
was swept away by no boyish extravagance, and, 
even while I wished he would sin only a very little, I 
still adored him as a saint. The truth is, as I tell 
10 Prue, I am so very bad because I have to sin for two 
— for myself and our cousin the curate. Often, when 
I returned panting and restless from some frolic, which 
had wasted almost all the night, I was rebuked as I 
entered the room in which he lay peacefully sleeping. ^ 
15 There was something holy in the profound repose of j 
his beauty, and, as I stood looking at him, how many i 
a time the tears have dropped from my hot eyes upon | 
his face, while I vowed to make myself worthy of such I 
a companion, for I felt my heart owning its allegiance j 
20 to that strong and imperial nature. I 

My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls I 
worshipped him. His mind, large in grasp, and subtle | 
in perception, naturally commanded his companions, 
while the lustre of his character allured those who 
25 could not understand liim. The asceticism occasionally 
showed itself a vein of hardness, or rather of severity 
in his treatment of others. He did what he thought 
it his duty to do, but he forgot that few could see the 
right so clearly as he, and very few of those few could 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


165 


SO calmly obey the least command of conscience. I 
confess I was a little afraid of him, for I think I never 
could be severe. 

In the long winter evenings I often read to Prue 
the story of some old father of the church, or some 5 
quaint poem of George Herbert’s — and every Clirist- 
mas Eve, I read to her Milton’s Hymn of the Nativ- 
ity. Yet, when the saint seems to us most saintly, 
or the poem most pathetic or sublime, we find our- 
selves talking of our cousin the curate. I have not 10 
seen him for many years ; but, when we parted, his 
head had the intellectual symmetry of Milton’s, with- 
out the puritanic stoop, and with the stately grace of 
a cavalier. 

Such a boy has premature wisdom — he lives and 15 
suffers prematurely. 

Prue loves to listen when I speak of the romance 
of his life, and I do not wonder. For my part, I find 
in the best romance only the story of my love for her, 
and often as I read to her, whenever I come to what 20 
Titbottom calls “the crying part,” if I lift my eyes 
suddenly, I see that Prue’s eyes are fixed on me with 
a softer light by reason of their moisture. 

Our cousin the curate loved, while he was yet a 
boy. Flora, of the sparkling eyes and the ringing voice. 25 
His devotion was absolute. Flora was flattered, be- 
cause all the girls, as I said, worshipped him ; but 
she was a gay, glancing girl, who had invaded the 
student’s heart with her audacious brilliancy, and 


166 


PRUE AND I 


was half surprised that she had subdued it. Our 
cousin — for I never think of him as my cousin, only — 
wasted away under the fervour of his passion. His 
life exhaled as incense before her. He wrote poems 
5 to her, and sang them under her window, in the summer 
moonlight. He brought her flowers and precious gifts. 
When he had nothing else to give, he gave her his love 
in a homage so eloquent and beautiful that the wor- 
ship was like the worship of the wise men. The gay 
10 Flora was proud and superb. She was a girl, and the 
bravest and best boy loved her. She was young, and 
the wisest and truest youth loved her. They lived 
together, we all lived together, in the happy valley of 
childhood. We looked forward to manhood as island- 
15 poets look across the sea, believing that the whole 
world beyond is a blest Araby of spices. 

The months went by, and the young love con- 
tinued. Our cousin and Flora were only children still, 
and there was no engagement. The elders looked 
20 upon the intimacy as natural and mutually beneflcial. 
It would help soften the boy and strengthen the girl ; 
and they took for granted that softness and strength 
were precisely what were wanted. It is a great pity 
that men and women forget that they have been 
25 children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to their 
sons and daughters. Maturity is the gate of Para- 
dise, which shuts behind us ; and our memories are 
gradually weaned from the glories in which our na- 
tivity was cradled. 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


167 


The months went by, the children grew older, and 
they constantly loved. Now Prue always smiles at 
one of my theories ; she is entirely sceptical of it ; but 
it is, nevertheless, my opinion, that men love most 
passionately, and women most permanently. Men 
love at first and most warmly ; women love last and 
longest. This is natural enough; for nature makes 
women to be won, and men to win. Men are the ac- 
tive, positive force, and, therefore, they are more ardent 
and demonstrative. 

I can never get farther than that in my philosophy, 
when Prue looks at me, and smiles me into scepticism 
of my own doctrines. But they are true, notwith- 
standing. 

' My day is rather past for such speculations ; but 
so long as Aurelia is unmarried, I am sure I shall in- 
dulge myself in them. I have never made much 
progress in the philosophy of love ; in fact, I can only 
be sure of this one cardinal principle, that when you 
are quite sure two people cannot be in love with each 
other, because there is no earthly reason why they 
should be, then you may be very confident that you 
are wrong, and that they are in love, for the secret of 
love is past finding out. Why our cousin should have 
loved the gay Flora so ardently was hard to say ; but 
that he did so, was not difficult to see. 

He went away to college. He wrote the most elo- 
quent and passionate letters ; and when he returned 
in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, nor heart for any 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


168 


PRUE AND 1 


other being. I rarely saw him, for I was living away 
from our early home, and was busy in a store — learn- 
ing to be book-keeper — but I heard afterward from 
himself the whole story. 

6 One day when he came home for the holidays, he 
found a young foreigner with Flora — a handsome 
youth, brilliant and graceful. I have asked Prue a 
thousand times why women adore soldiers and for- 
eigners. She says it is because they love heroism and 
10 are romantic. A soldier is professionally a hero, says 
Prue, and a foreigner is associated with all unknown 
and beautiful regions. I hope there is no worse reason. 
But if it be the distance which is romantic, then, by 
her own rule, the mountain which looked to you so 
15 lovely when you saw it upon the horizon, when you 
stand upon its rocky and barren side, has transmitted 
its romance to its remotest neighbour. I cannot but 
admire the fancies of girls which make them poets. 
They have only to look upon a dull-eyed, ignorant, 
20 exhausted roue, with an impudent moustache, and they 
surrender to Italy, to the tropics, to the splendours of 
nobility, and a court life — and 

“Stop,” says Prue, gently; “you have no right 
to say ‘girls’ do so, because some poor victims have 
25 been deluded. Would Aurelia surrender to a blear- 
eyed foreigner in a moustache?” 

Prue has such a reasonable way of putting these 
things ! 

Our cousin came home and found Flora and the 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


169 


young foreigner conversing. The young foreigner 
had large, soft, black eyes, and the dusky skin of the 
tropics. His manner was languid and fascinating, 
courteous and reserved. It assumed a natural su- 
premacy, and you felt as if here were a young princes 
travelling before he came into possession of his realm. 

It is an old fable that love is blind. But I think 
there are no eyes so sharp as those of lovers. I am 
sure there is not a shade upon Prue’s brow that I 
do not instantly remark, nor an altered tone in her 10 
voice that I do not instantly observe. Do you sup- 
pose Aurelia would not note the slightest deviation 
of heart in her lover, if she had one? Love is the 
coldest of critics. To be in love is to live in a crisis, 
and the very imminence of uncertainty makes the 15 
lover perfectly self-possessed. His eye constantly 
scours the horizon. There is no footfall so light that 
it does not thunder in his ear. Love is tortured by the 
tempest the moment the cloud of a hand’s size rises 
out of the sea. It foretells its own doom ; its agony 20 
is past before its sufferings are known. 

Our cousin the curate no sooner saw the tropical 
stranger, and marked his impression upon Flora, 
than he felt the end. As the shaft struck his heart, 
his smile was sweeter, and his homage even more 25 
poetic and reverential. I doubt if Flora understood 
him or herself. She did not know, what he instinct- 
ively perceived, that she loved him less. But there 
are no degrees in love ; when it is less than absolute 


170 


PRUE AND I 


and supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora 
were not formally engaged, but their betrothal was 
understood by all of us as a thing of course. He did 
not allude to the stranger ; but as day followed day, 
she saw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually 
— so gradually that she scarcely noticed it — our 
cousin left Flora more and more with the soft-eyed 
stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His treatment 
of her was so full of tact, he still walked and talked 
10 with her so familiarly, that she was not troubled by 
any fear that he saw what she hardly saw herself. 
Therefore, she was not obliged to conceal anything 
from him or from herself ; but all the soft currents 
of her heart were setting toward the West Indian. 
15 Our cousin’s cheek grew paler, and his soul burned 
and wasted within him. His whole future — all his 
dream of life — had been founded upon his love. It 
was a stately palace built upon the sand, and now 
the sand was sliding away. I have read somewhere, 
20 that love will sacrifice everything but itself. But our 
cousin sacrificed his love to the happiness of his mis- 
tress. He ceased to treat her as peculiarly his own. 
He made no claim in word or manner that everybody 
might not have made. He did not refrain from seeing 
25 her, or speaking of her as of all his other friends ; and, 
at length, although no one could say how or when 
the change had been made, it was evident and under- 
stood that he was no more her lover, but that both 
were the best of friends. 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


171 


He still wrote to her occasionally from college, and 
his letters were those of a friend, not of a lover. He 
could not reproach her. I do not believe any man 
is secretly surprised that a woman ceases to love him. 
Her love is a heavenly favour won by no desert of 5 
his. If it passes, he can no more complain than a 
flower when the sunshine leaves it. 

Before our cousin left college. Flora was married 
to the tropical stranger. It was the brightest of June 
days, and the summer smiled upon the bride. There 10 
were roses in her hand and orange flowers in her hair, 
and the village church bell rang out over the peaceful 
fields. The warm sunshine lay upon the landscape 
like God’s blessing, and Prue and I, not yet married 
ourselves, stood at an open window in the old meeting- 15 
house, hand in hand, while the young couple spoke their 
vows. Prue says that brides are always beautiful, and 
I, who remember Prue herself upon her wedding-day 
— how can I deny it ? Truly, the gay Flora was lovely 
that summer morning, and the throng was happy in 20 
the old church. But it was very sad to me, although 
I only suspected then what now I know. I shed no 
tears at my own wedding, but I did at Flora’s, al- 
though I knew she was marrying a soft-eyed youth 
whom she dearly loved, and who, I doubt not, dearly 25 
loved her. 

Among the group of her nearest friends was our 
cousin the curate. When the ceremony was ended, 
he came to shake her hand with the rest. His face 


172 


PRUE AND I 


was calm, and his smile sweet, and his manner un- 
constrained. Flora did not blush — why should she ? 
— but shook his hand warmly, and thanked him for 
his good wishes. Then they all sauntered down the 
5 aisle together ; there were some tears with the smiles 
among the other friends ; our cousin handed the bride 
into her carriage, shook hands with the husband, 
closed the door, and Flora drove away. 

I have never seen her since; I do not even know 
10 if she be living still. But I shall always remember 
her as she looked that June morning, holding roses in 
her hand, and wreathed with orange flowers. Dear 
Flora ! it was no fault of hers that she loved one man 
more than another : she could not be blamed for not 
15 preferring our cousin to the West Indian : there is no 
fault in the story, it is only a tragedy. 

Our cousin carried all the collegiate honours — but 
without exciting jealousy or envy. He was so really 
the best, that his companions were anxious he should 
20 have the. sign of his superiority. He studied hard, he 
thought much, and wrote well. There was no evi- 
dence of any blight upon his ambition or career, but 
after living quietly in the country for some time, he 
went to Europe and travelled. When he returned, he 
25 resolved to study law, but presently relinquished it. 
Then he collected materials for a history, but suffered 
them to lie unused. Somehow the mainspring was 
gone. He used to come and pass weeks with Prue 
and me. His coming made the children happy, for 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


173 


he sat with them, and talked and played with them all 
day long, as one of themselves. They had no quarrels 
when our cousin the curate was their playmate, and 
their laugh was hardly sweeter than his as it rang 
down from the nursery. Yet sometimes, as True ^ 
was setting the tea-table, and I sat musing by the 
fire, she stopped and turned to me as we heard that 
sound, and her eyes filled with tears. 

He was interested in all subjects that interested 
others. His fine perception, his clear sense, his noble 10 
imagination, illuminated every question. His friends 
wanted him to go into political life, to write a great 
book, to do something worthy of his powers. It was 
the very thing he longed to do himself ; but he came 
and played with the children in the nursery, and the 1^ 
great deed was undone. Often, in the long winter 
evenings, we talked of the past, while Titbottom sat 
silent by, and Prue was busily knitting. He told us 
the incidents of his early passion — but he did not 
moralize about it, nor sigh, nor grow moody. He 20 
turned to Prue, sometimes, and jested gently, and 
often quoted from the old song of George Wither’s,® 

I believe : 


“If she be not fair for me,° 

What care I how fair she be?” 

But there was no flippancy in the jesting ; I thought 
the sweet humour was no gayer than a flower upon 
a grave. 


174 


PRUE AND I 


I am sure Titbottom loved our cousin the curate, 
for his heart is as hospitable as the summer heaven. 
It was beautiful to watch his courtesy toward him, 
and I do not wonder that Prue considers the deputy 
5 book-keeper the model of a high-bred gentleman. 
When you see his poor clothes, and thin, gray hair, 
his loitering step, and dreamy eye, you might pass 
him by as an inefficient man ; but when you hear his 
voice always speaking for the noble and generous side, 
10 or recounting, in a half -melancholy chant, the recol- 
lections of his youth; when you know that his heart 
beats with the simple emotion of a boy’s heart, and that 
his courtesy is as delicate as a girl’s modesty, you will 
understand why Prue declares that she has never seen 
15 but one man who reminded her of our especial favourite. 
Sir Philip Sidney, and that his name is Titbottom. 

At length our cousin went abroad again to Europe. 
It was many years ago that we watched him sail away, 
and when Titbottom, and Prue, and I, went home to 
20 dinner, the grace that was said that day was a fervent 
prayer for our cousin the curate. Many an evening 
afterward, the children wanted him, and cried them- 
selves to sleep calling upon his name. Many an eve- 
ning still, our talk flags into silence as we sit before 
25 the fire, and Prue puts down her knitting and takes 
my hand, as if she knew my thoughts, although we do 
not name his name. 

He wrote us letters as he wandered about the world. 
They were affectionate letters, full of observation, 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


175 


and thought, and description. He lingered longest 
in Italy, but he said his conscience accused him of 
yielding to the syrens ; and he declared that his life 
was running uselessly away. At last he came to Eng- 
land. He was charmed with everything, and the 
climate was even kinder to him than that of Italy. 
He went to all the famous places, and saw many of 
the famous Englishmen, and wrote that he felt Eng- 
land to be his home. Burying himself in the ancient 
gloom of a university town, although past the prime 
of life, he studied like an ambitious boy. He said 
again that his life had been wine poured upon the 
ground, and he felt guilty. And so our cousin became 
a curate. • 

"‘Surely,” wrote he, “you and Prue will be glad 
to hear it; and my friend Titbottom can no longer 
boast that he is more useful in the world than I. Dear 
old George Herbert has already said what I would say 
to you, and here it is : 

“‘I made a posy, while the day ran by :® 

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie 
My life within this band. 

But time did beckon to the flowers, and they 
My noon most cunningly did steal away. 

And wither’d in my hand. 

‘My hand was next to them, and then my heart ; 

I took, without more thinking, in good part. 

Time’s gentle admonition ; 

Which did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey, 
aking my mind to smell my fatal day. 

Yet sugaring the suspicion. 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 


176 


PRUE AND I 


‘Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent, 
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament. 

And after death for cures ; 

I follow straight without complaints or grief, 

6 Since if my scent be good, I care not if 
It be as short as yours.’ ” 

This is our only relation ; and do you wonder that, 
whether our days are dark or bright, we naturally 
speak of our cousin the curate? There is no nursery 
10 longer, for the children are grown ; but I have seen 
Prue stand, with her hand holding the door, for an 
hour, and looking into the room now so sadly still and 
tidy, with a sweet solemnity in her eyes that I will 
call holy. Our children have forgotten their old play- 
15 mate, but I flm sure if there be any children in his 
parish, over the sea, they love our cousin the curate, 
and watch eagerly for his coming. Does his step 
falter now, I wonder ; is that long, fair hair, gray ; is 
that laugh as musical in those distant homes as it used 
20 to be in our nursery ; has England, among all her good 
and great men, any man so noble as our cousin the 
curate ? 

The great oook is unwritten; the great deeds are 
undone ; in no biographical dictionary will you find 
25 the name of our cousin the curate. Is his life, there- 
fore, lost ? Have his powers been wasted ? 

I do not dare to say it; for I see Bourne, on the 
pinnacle of prosperity, but still looking sadly for his 
castle in Spain ; I see Titbottom, an old deputy book- 
30 keeper, whom nobody knows, but with his chivalric 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE 


177 


heart, loyal to whatever is generous and humane, full 
of sweet hope, and faith, and devotion ; I see the 
superb Aurelia, so lovely that the Indians would call 
her a smile of the Great Spirit, and as beneficent as 
a saint of the calendar — how shall I say what is lost, 5 
or what is won? I know that in every way, and by 
all His creatures, God is served and His purposes ac- 
complished. How should I explain or understand, I 
who am only an old book-keeper in a white cravat ? 

Yet in all history, in the splendid triumphs of em- 10 
perors and kings, in the dreams of poets, the specu- 
lations of philosophers, the sacrifices of heroes, and the 
ecstasies of saints, I find no exclusive secret of success. 
Prue says she knows that nobody ever did more good 
than our cousin the curate, for every smile and word 15 
of his is a good deed; and I, for my part, am sure 
that, although many must do more good in the world, 
nobody enjoys it more than Prue and I. 



PART II 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


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THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


The Oration Delivered at the Commencement of 
Union College, June 27, 1877. 

It is with diffidence that I rise to add any words of 
mine to the music of these younger voices. This day. 
Gentlemen of the Graduating Class, is especially yours. 

It is a day of high hope and expectation; and the 
councils that fall from older lips should be carefully 5 
weighed, lest they chill the ardor of a generous en- 
thusiasm, or stay the all-conquering faith of youth 
that moves the world. To those who, constantly and 
actively engaged in a thousand pursuits, are still per- 
suaded that educated intelligence molds states and 10 
leads mankind, no day in the year is more significant, 
more inspiring, than this of the College Commence- 
ment. It matters not at what college it may be cele- 
brated. It is the same at all. We stand here indeed 
beneath these college walls, beautiful for situation, 15 
girt at this moment with the perfumed splendor of 
midsummer, and full of tender memories and joyous 
associations to those who hear me. But on this day, 
and on other days, at a hundred other colleges, this 
summer sun beholds the same spectacle of eager and 20 
181 


182 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

earnest throngs. The faith that we hold, they also 
cherish. It is the same God that is worshiped at the 
different altars. It is the same benediction that de- 
scends upon every reverent head and believing heart. 

5 In this annual celebration of faith in the power and 
the responsibility of educated men, all the colleges in 
the country, in whatever State, of whatever age, of 
whatever religious sympathy or direction, form but 
one great Union University. 

10 But the interest of the day is not that of mere study, 
of sound scholarship as an end, of good books for their 
own sake, but of education as a power in human affairs ; 
of educated men as an influence in the commonwealth. 
“Tell me,” said an American scholar of Goethe,° the 
15 many-sided, “what did he ever do for the cause of 
man?” The scholar, the poet, the philosopher, are 
men among other men. From these unavoidable 
social relations spring opportunities and duties. How 
do they use them ? How do they discharge them ? 
20 Does the scholar show in his daily walk that he 
has studied the wisdom of ages in vain? Does the 
poet sing of angelic purity and lead an unclean 
life? Does the philosopher peer into other worlds, 
and fail to help this world upon its way? Four years 
25 before our Civil War, the same scholar — it was Theo- 
dore Parker® — said sadly : “ If our educated men had 
done their duty, we should not now be in the ghastly 
condition we bewail.” The theme of to-day seems 
to me to be prescribed by the occasion. It is the 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 183 


festival of the departure of a body of educated young 
men into the world. This company of picked recruits 
marches out with beating drums and flying colors to 
join the army. We who feel that our fate is gracious 
which allowed a liberal training, are here to welcome 5 
and to advise. On your behalf, Mr. President and 
Gentlemen, with your authority, and with all my heart, 

I shall say a word to them and to you of the public 
duty of educated men in America. 

I shall not assume. Gentlemen Graduates, for 1 10 
know that it is not so, that what Dr. Johnson® says 
of the teachers of Rasselas and the princes of Abyssinia 
can be truly said of you in your happy valley — “ The 
sages who instructed them told them of nothing but 
the miseries of public life, and described all beyond 15 
the mountains as regions of calamity where discord 
was always raging, and where man preyed upon man.” 
The sages who have instructed you are American 
citizens. They know that patriotism has its glorious 
opportunities and its sacred duties. They have not 20 
shunned the one, and they have well performed the 
other. In the sharpest stress of our awful conflict, 
a clear voice of patriotic warning was heard from these 
peaceful Academic shades ; the voice of the venerated 
teacher® whom this University still freshly deplores, 25 
drawing, from the wisdom of experience stored in 
his ample learning, a lesson of startling cogency and 
power from the history of Greece for the welfare of 
America. 


184 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


This was the discharge of a public duty by an edu- 
cated man. It illustrated an indispensable condition 
of a progressive republic : the active, practical in- 
terest in politics of the most intelligent citizens. Civil 
6 and religious liberty in this country can be preserved 
only through the agency of our political institutions. 
But those institutions alone will not suffice. It is not 
the ship so much as the sldllful sailing that assures 
the prosperous voyage. American institutions pre- 
10 suppose not only general honesty and intelligence in 
the people, but their constant and direct application 
to public affairs. Our system rests upon all the people, 
not upon a part of them, and the citizen who evades 
his share of the burden betrays his fellows. Our 
15 safety lies not in our institutions but in ourselves. It 
was under the forms of the republic that Julius Caesar® 
made himself emperor of Rome. It was professing 
reverence for the national traditions that James II.° 
was destroying religious liberty in England. To 
20 labor, said the old monks, is to pray. What we ear- 
nestly desire we earnestly toil for. That she may be 
prized more truly, heaven-eyed Justice flies from us, 
like the Tartar maid from her lovers, and she yields 
her embrace at last only to the swiftest and most 
25 daring of her pursuers. 

By the words public duty I do not necessarily mean 
official duty, although it may include that. I mean 
simply that constant and active practical participa- 
tion in the details of politics without which, upon the 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 185 


part of the most intelligent citizens, the conduct of 
public affairs falls under the control of selfish and ig- 
norant, or crafty and venal men. I mean that per- 
sonal attention which, as it must be incessant, is often 
wearisome and even repulsive, to the details of politics, 
attendance at meetings, service upon committees, care 
and trouble and expense of many kinds, patient en- 
durance of rebuffs, chagrins, ridicules, disappointments, 
defeats — in a word, all those duties arid services which, 
when selfishly and meanly performed, stigmatize a 
man as a mere politician ; but whose constant, honor- 
able, intelligent, and vigilant performance is the 
gradual building, stone by stone, and layer by layer, 
of that great temple of self-restrained liberty which 
all generous souls mean that our government shall be. 

Public duty in this country is not discharged, as is so 
often supposed, by voting. A man may vote regu- 
larly, and still fail essentially of his political duty, as 
the Pharisee® who gave tithes of all that he possessed, 
and fasted three times in the week, yet lacked the very 
heart of religion. When an American citizen is con- 
tent with voting merely, he consents to accept what 
is often a doubtful alternative. His first duty is to 
help share the alternative. This, which was formerly 
less necessary, is now indispensable. In a rural com- 
munity such as this country was a hundred years ago, 
whoever was nominated for office was known to his 
neighbours, and the consciousness of that knowledge 
was a conservative influence in determining nomina- 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


186 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


tions. But in the local elections of the great cities 
of to-day, elections that control taxation and expendi- 
ture, the mass of the voters vote in absolute ignorance 
of the candidates. The citizen who supposes that he 
5 does all his duty when he votes, places a premium upon 
political knavery. Thieves welcome him to the polls 
and offer him a choice, which he has done nothing to 
prevent, between Jeremy Diddler° and Dick Turpin.® 
The party cries, for which he is responsible, are, 
10 “Turpin and Honesty!” “Diddler and Reform!” 
And within a few years, as a result of this indiffer- 
ence to the details of public duty, the most powerful 
politician in the Empire State of the Union was Jona- 
than Wild,® the Great, the captain of a band of plunder- 
15 ers. I know it is said that the knaves have taken 
the honest men in a net, and have contrived machinery 
which will inevitably grind only the grist of rascals. 
The answer is, that when honest men did once what 
they ought to do always, the thieves were netted and 
20 their machine was broken. To say that in this country 
the rogues must rule, is to defy history and to despair 
of the republic. It is to repeat the imbecile executive 
cry of sixteen years ago, “ Oh, dear ! the States have 
no right to go;” and, “Oh, dear! the nation has no 
25 right to help itself.” Let the LTnion, stronger than 
ever and unstained with national wrong, teach us the 
power of patriotic virtue — and Ludlow Street jail 
console those who suppose that American politics 
must necessarily be a game of thieves and bullies. 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 187 


If ignorance and corruption and intrigue control the 
primary meeting, and manage the convention, and 
dictate the nomination, the fault is in the honest and 
intelligent workshop and office, in the library and the 
parlor, in the church and the school. When they are 
as constant and faithful to their political rights as the 
slums and the grog-shops, the pool-rooms and the 
kennels ; when the educated, industrious, temperate, 
thrifty citizens are as zealous and prompt and un- 
failing in political activity as the ignorant and venal 
and mischievous, or when it is plain that they cannot 
be roused to their duty, then, but not until then — if 
ignorance and corruption always carry the day — there 
can be no honest question that the republic has failed. 
But let us not be deceived. While good men sit at 
home, not knowing that there is anything to be done, 
nor caring to know ; cultivating a feeling that politics 
are tiresome and dirty, and politicians vulgar bullies 
and bravoes ; half persuaded that a republic is the 
contemptible rule of a mob, and secretly longing for 
a splendid and vigorous despotism, — then remember 
it is not a government mastered by ignorance, it is a 
government betrayed by intelligence; it is not the 
victory of the slums, it is the surrender of the schools ; 
it is not that bad men are brave, but that good men are 
infidels and cowards. 

But, gentlemen, when you come to address your- 
selves to these primary public duties, your first sur- 
prise and dismay will be the discovery that, in a 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 


188 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

country where education is declared to be tlie hope 
of its institutions, the higher education is often prac- 
tically held to be almost a disadvantage. You will 
go from these halls to hear a very common sneer at 
6 college-bred men ; to encounter a jealousy of edu- 
cation as making men visionary and pedantic and 
impracticable ; to confront a belief that there is 
sometliing enfeebling in the higher education, and 
that self-made men, as they are called, are the sure 
10 stay of the state. But what is really meant by a 
self-made man? It is a man of native sagacity and 
strong character, who was taught, it is proudly said, 
only at the plow or the anvil or the bench. He was 
schooled by adversity, and was polished by hard 
15 attrition with men. He is Benjamin Franklin, the 
printer’s boy, or Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter. 
They never went to college, but nevertheless, like 
Agamemnon,® they were kings of men, and the world 
blesses their memory. 

20 So it does ; but the sophistry here is plain enough, 
although it is not always detected. Great genius and 
force of character undoubtedly make their own career. 
But because Walter Scott was dull at school, is a 
parent to see with joy that his son is a dunce? Be- 
25 cause Lord Chatham® was of a towering conceit, must 
we infer that pompous vanity portends a comprehensive 
statesmanship that will fill the world with the splendor 
of its triumphs ? Because Sir Robert Walpole® gambled 
and swore and boozed at Houghton, are we to suppose 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 189 


that gross sensuality and coarse contempt of human 
nature are the essential secrets of a power that de- 
fended liberty against Tory intrigue and priestly 
politics? Was it because Benjamin Franklin was. 
not college-bred that he drew the lightning from heaven 5 
and tore the scepter from the tyrant ? Was it because 
Abraham Lincoln had little schooling that his great 
heart beat true to God and man, lifting him to free a 
race and die for his country ? Because men naturally 
great have done great service in the world without 10 
advantages, does it follow that lack of advantage is 
the secret of success? Was Pericles® a less sagacious 
leader of the state, during forty years of Athenian 
glory, because he was thoroughly accomplished in 
every grace of learning ? Or, swiftly passing from the 15 
Athenian agora® to the Boston town-meeting, behold 
Samuel Adams,® tribune of New England against 
Old England, of America against Europe, of liberty 
against despotism. Was his power enfeebled, his 
fervor chilled, his patriotism relaxed, by his college 20 
education ? No, no ; they were strengthened, kindled, 
confirmed. Taking his Master’s degree one hundred 
and thirty-four years ago, thirty-three years before 
the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams, then 
twenty-cne years old, declared in a Latin discourse — 25 
the first flashes of the fire that blazed afterward in 
Faneuil Hall® and kindled America — that it is lawful 
to resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth 
cannot otherwise be preserved. In the very year 


190 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


that Jefferson® was born, the college boy, Samuel 
Adams, on a Commencement day like this, on an 
academical platform like this on which we stand, struck 
•the keynote of American independence, which still 
5 stirs the heart of man with its music. 

Or, within our own century, look at the great modern 
statesmen who have shaped the politics of the world. 
They were educated men ; were they therefore vision- 
ary, pedantic, impracticable? Cavour,® whose monu- j 
10 ment is United Italy — one from the Alps to Tarentum, 
from the lagoons of Venice to the Gulf of Salerno; I 
Bismarck,® who has raised the German empire from j 
a name to a fact ; Gladstone,® to-day the incarnate ' 
heart and conscience of England — they are the per- 
I5petual refutation of the sneer that higher education 
weakens men for practical affairs. Trained themselves, 
such men know the value of training. All countries, i 
all ages, all men, are their teachers. The broader 
their education, the wider the horizon of their thought ’ 
20 and observation, the more affluent their resources, 
the more humane their policy. Would Samuel Adams 
have been a truer popular leader had he been less an 
educated man? Would Walpole the less truly have 
served his country had he been, with all his capacities, 
25a man whom England could have revered and loved? ; 
Could Gladstone so sway England with his serene 
eloquence, as the moon the tides, were he a gambling, 
swearing, boozing squire like Walpole? There is no 
sophistry more poisonous to the state, no folly more ; 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 191 

i stupendous and demoralizing, than the notion that 
the purest character and the highest education are 
i incompatible with the most commanding mastery of 
men and the most efficient administration of affairs. 

Undoubtedly a practical and active interest in 5 
politics will lead you to party association and co- 
operation. Great public results — the repeal of the 
corn laws® in England, the abolition of slavery in 
, America — are due to that organization of effort and 
I concentration of aim which arouse, instruct, and in- 10 
i spire the popular heart and will. This is the spring 
of party, and those who earnestly seek practical results 
instinctively turn to this agency of united action. 
But in this tendency, useful in the state as the fire 
upon the household hearth, lurks, as in that fire, the 15 
deadliest peril. Here is our republic — it is a ship 
with towering canvas spread, sweeping before the 
prosperous gale over a foaming and sparkling sea; 
it is a lightning train, darting with awful speed along 
the edge of dizzy abysses and across bridges that 20 
quiver over unsounded gulfs. Because we are Ameri- 
cans, we have no peculiar charm, no magic spell, to 
stay the eternal laws. Our safety lies alone in cool 
self-possession, directing the forces of wind and wave. 

! and fire. If once the madness to which the excitement 25 
i tends usurps control, the catastrophe is inevitable. 
And so deep is the conviction that sooner or later this 
madness must seize every republic, that the most 
plausible suspicion of the permanence of the American 


192 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

government is founded in the belief that party spirit 
cannot be restrained. It is indeed a master passion, 
but its control is the true conservatism of the republic 
and of happy human progress ; and it is men made 
5 familiar by education with the history of its ghastly 
catastrophes, men with the proud courage of inde- 
pendence, who are to temper by lofty action, born of 
that knowledge, the ferocity of party spirit. 

The first object of concerted political action is the 
10 highest welfare of the country. But the conditions of 
party association are such that the means are constantly 
and easily substituted for the end. The. sophistry is 
subtle and seductive. Holding the ascendency of his 
party essential to the national welfare, the zealous 
16 partisan merges patriotism in party. He insists that 
not to sustain the party is to betray the country, and 
against all honest doubt and reasonable hesitation 
and reluctance, he vehemently urges that quibbles 
of conscience must be sacrificed to the public good; 
20 that wise and practical men will not be squeamish ; 
that every soldier in the army cannot indulge his own 
whims; and that if the majority may justly prevail 
in determining the government, it must not be ques- 
tioned in the control of a party. 

26 This spirit adds moral coercion to sophistry.® It 
denounces as a traitor him who protests against party 
tyranny, and it makes unflinching adherence to what 
is called regular party action the condition of the 
gratification of honorable political ambition. Because 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 193 

a man who sympathizes with the party aims refuses 
to vote for a thief, this spirit scorns him as a rat and a 
renegade. Because he holds to principle and law 
against party expediency and dictation, he is proclaimed 
to have betrayed his country, justice, and humanity. 5 
Because he tranquilly insists upon deciding for him- 
self when he must dissent from his party, he is reviled 
as a popinjay and a visionary fool. Seeking with 
honest purpose only the welfare of his country, the 
hot air around him hums with the cry of “ the grand 10 
old party,” “the traditions of the party,” “loyalty to 
the party,” “future of the party,” “servant of the 
party,” and he sees and hears the gorged and portly 
money-changers in the temple usurping the very 
divinity of the God. Young hearts ! be not dismayed. 15 
If ever any one of you shall be the man so denounced, 
do not forget that your own individual convictions 
are the whip of small cords which God has put into 
your hands to expel the blasphemers. 

The same party spirit naturally denies the patriotism 20 
of its opponents. Identifying itself with the country, 
it regards all others as public enemies. This is sub- 
stantially revolutionary politics. It is the condition 
of France, where, in its own words, the revolution is 
permanent. Instead of regarding the other party as 25 
legitimate opponents — in the English phrase. His 
Majesty’s Opposition — lawfully seeking a different 
policy under the government, it decries that party 
as a conspiracy plotting the overthrow of the govern- 


194 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


ment itself. History is lurid with the wasting fires 
of this madness. We need not look to that of other 
lands. Our own is full of it. It is painful to turn 
to the opening years of the Union, and see how the great 
5 men whom we are taught to revere, and to whose 
fostering care the beginning of the republic was in- 
trusted, fanned their hatred and suspicion of each 
other. Do not trust the flattering voices that whisper 
of a Golden Age behind us, and bemoan our own as a 
10 degenerate day. The castles of hope always shine 
along the horizon. Our fathers saw theirs where we 
are standing. We behold ours where our fathers 
stood. But pensive regret for the heroic past, like 
eager anticipation of the future, shows only that the 
15 vision of a loftier life forever allures the human soul. 
We think our fathers to have been wiser than we, and 
their day more enviable. But eighty years ago the 
Federalists® abhorred their opponents as Jacobins,® 
and thought Robespierre® and Marat®- no worse than 
20 Washington’s Secretary of State. Their opponents 
retorted that the Federalists were plotting to establish 
a monarchy by force of arms. The New England 
pulpit anathematized Tom Jefferson as an atheist 
and a satyr. Jefferson denounced John Jay® as a 
25 rogue, and the chief newspaper of the opposition, on 
the morning that Washington retired from the pres- 
idency, thanked God that the country was now rid 
of the man who was the source of all its misfortunes. 
There is no mire in which party spirit wallows to-day 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 195 


with which our fathers were not befouled, and how 
little sincere the vituperation was, how shallow a 
fury, appears when Jefferson and Adams had retired 
from public life. Then they corresponded placidly 
and familiarly, each at last conscious of the other’s 5 
fervent patriotism; and when they died, they were 
lamented in common by those who in their names had 
flown at each other’s throats, as the patriarchal Castor 
and Pollux® of the pure age of our politics, now fixed 
as a constellation of hope in our heaven. lO 

The same brutal spirit showed itself at the time of 
Andrew Johnson’s® impeachment. Impeachment is a 
proceeding to be instituted only for great public reasons, 
which should, presumptively, command universal 
support. To prostitute the power of impeachment 15 
to a mere party purpose would readily lead to the re- 
versal of the result of an election. But it was made 
a party measure. The party was to be whipped into 
its support : and when certain Senators broke the 
party yoke upon their necks, and voted according to 20 
their convictions, as honorable men always will, 
whether the party whips like it or not, one of the 
whippers-in exclaimed of a patriotism, the struggle of 
obedience to which cost one Senator, at least, his life — 

“ If there is anything worse than the treachery, it is 25 
the cant which pretends that it is the result of con- 
scientious conviction ; the pretense of a conscience is 
quite unbearable.” This was the very acridity of 
bigotry, which in other times and countries raised 


196 THE PUBLIC DUTY OP EDUCATED MEN 

the cruel tribunal of the Inquisition, and burned 
opponents for the glory of God. The party madness 
that dictated these words, and the sympathy that 
approved them, was treason not alone to the country 
5 but to well-ordered human society. Murder may 
destroy great statesmen, but corruption makes great 
states impossible; and this was an attempt at the 
most insidious corruption. The man who attempts 
to terrify a Senator of the United States to cast a dis- 
10 honest vote, by stigmatizing him as a hypocrite and 
devoting him to party hatred, is only a more plausible 
rascal than his opponent who gives Pat O’Flanagan 
a fraudulent naturalization paper or buys his vote 
with a dollar or a glass of whisky. Whatever the 
15 offenses of the President may have been, they were 
as nothing when compared with the party spirit which 
declared that it was tired of the intolerable cant of 
honesty. So the sneering cavalier was tired of the 
cant of the Puritan conscience ; but the conscience of 
20 which plumed Injustice and coroneted Privilege were 
tired has been for three centuries the invincible body- 
guard of civil and religious liberty. 

Gentlemen, how dire a calamity the same party 
spirit was preparing for the country within a few 
25 months, we can now perceive with amazement and 
with hearty thanlcsgiving for a great deliverance. 
The ordeal of last winter was the severest strain ever 
yet applied to republican institutions. It was a mortal 
strain along the very fiber of our system. It was 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 197 

not a collision of sections, nor a conflict of principles 
of civilization. It was a supreme and triumphant 
test of American patriotism. Greater than the declara- 
tion of independence by colonies hopelessly alienated 
from the Crown and already in arms; greater than 5 
emancipation, as a military expedient, amid the throes 
of civil war, was the peaceful and reasonable consent 
of two vast parties — in a crisis plainly foreseen and 
criminally neglected — a crisis in which each party 
asserted its solution to be indisputable — to devise a 10 
lawful settlement of the tremendous contest, a settle- 
ment which, through furious storms of disappoint- 
ment and rage, has been religiously respected. We 
are told that our politics are mean — that already, 
in its hundredth year, the decadence of the American 15 
republic appears and the hope of the world is clouded. 
But tell me, scholars, in what high hour of Greece, 
when, as De Witt Clinton® declared, the herb-woman 
could criticise the phraseology of Demosthenes,® and 
the meanest artisan could pronounce judgment on the 20 
works of Apelles® and Phidias,® or at what proud epoch 
of imperial Rome, or millennial moment of the fierce 
Italian republics, was ever so momentous a party 
difference so wisely, so peacefully, so humanely, com- 
posed? Had the sophistry of party prevailed, had 25 
each side resolved that not to insist upon its own claim 
at every hazard was what the mad party spirit of each 
side declared it to be, a pusillanimous surrender ; had 
the spirit of Marius® mastered one party and that of 


198 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


Sylla*^ the other, this waving valley of the Mohawk 
would not to-day murmur with the music of industry, 
and these tranquil voices of scholars blending with its 
happy harvest song ; it would have smoked and roared 
5 with fraternal war, and this shuddering river would 
have run red through desolated meadows and by 
burning homes. 

It is because these consequences are familiar to the 
knowledge of educated and thoughtful men that such 
10 men are constantly to assuage this party fire and to 
take care that party is always subordinated to patriot- 
ism. Perfect party discipline is the most dangerous 
weapon of party spirit, for it is the abdication of the 
individual judgment : it is the application to political 
15 parties of the Jesuit principle of implicit obedience. 

It is for you to help break this withering spell. It is 
for you to assert the independence and the dignity of 
the individual citizen, and to prove that party was 
made for the voter, not the voter for party. When 
20 you are angrily told that if you erect your personal 
whim against the regular party behest, you make 
representative government impossible by refusing to 
accept its conditions, hold fast by your own conscience 
and let the party go. There is not an American mer- 
25 chant who would send a ship to sea under the command 
of Captain Kidd,° however skillful a sailor he might be. 
Why should he vote to send Captain Kidd to the 
legislature or to put him in command of the ship of 
state because his party directs? The party which 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 199 

to-day nominates Captain Kidd, will to-morrow nomi- 
nate Judas Iscariot; and to-morrow, as to-day, party 
spirit will spurn you as a traitor for refusing to sell 
your master. “I tell you,^’ said an ardent and well- 
meaning partisan, speaking of a closely contested 5 
election in another State, I tell you it is a nasty State, 
and I hope we have done nasty work enough to carry 
it.” But if your State has been carried by nasty 
means this year, success will require nastier next year, 
and the nastiest means will always carry it. The 10 
party may win, but the State will have been lost, for 
there are successes which are failures. When a man 
ds sitting upon the bough of a tree and diligently saw'- 
ing it off between himself and the trunk, he may suc- 
ceed, but his success will break his neck. 15 

The remedy for the constant excess of party spirit 
lies, and lies alone, in the courageous independence of 
the individual citizen. The only way, for instance, 
to procure the party nomination of good men, is for 
every self-respecting voter to refuse to vote for bad 20 
men. In the mediaeval theology the devils feared 
nothing so much as the drop of holy water and the 
sign of the cross, by which they were exorcised. The 
evil spirits of party fear nothing so much as bolting 
and scratching. In hoc signo vinces° If a farmer 25 
would reap a good crop, he scratches the weeds out 
of his field. If we would have good men upon the 
ticket, we must scratch bad men off. If the scratch- 
ing breaks down the party, let it break ; for the success 


200 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 


of the party by such means would break down the 
country. The evil spirits must be taught by means 
that they can understand. “Them fellers” — said the 
captain of a canal-boat of his men — “ them fellers 
5 never think you mean a thing until you kick ’em. 
They feel that, and understand.” 

It is especially necessary for us to perceive the vital 
relation of individual courage and character to the 
common welfare because ours is a government of public 
10 opinion, and public opinion is but the aggregate of 
individual thought. We have the awful responsi- 
bility as a community of doing what we choose ; and 
it is of the last importance that we choose to do what 
is wise and right. In the early days of the anti-slavery 
15 agitation a meeting was called at Faneuil Hall, in 
Boston, which a good-natured mob of sailors was hired 
to suppress. They took possession of the floor and 
danced breakdowns and shouted choruses and refused 
to bear any of the orators upon the platform. The 
20 most eloquent pleaded with them in vain. They were 
urged by the memories of the Cradle of Liberty, for 
the honor of Massachusetts, for their own honor as 
Boston boys, to respect liberty of speech. But they 
still laughed and sang and dance'd, and were proof 
25 against every appeal. At last a man suddenly arose 
from among themselves, and began to speak. Struck 
by his tone and quaint appearance, and with the thought 
that he might be one of themselves, the mob became 
suddenly still. “Well, fellow-citizens,” he said, “I 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 201 

wouldn’t be quiet if I didn’t want to.” The words 
were greeted with a roar of delight from the mob, which 
supposed it had found its champion, and the applause 
was unceasing for five minutes, during which the 
strange orator tranquilly awaited his chance to con- 5 
tinue. The wish to hear more hushed the tumult, 
and when the hall was still he resumed: “No, I cer- 
tainly wouldn’t stop if I hadn’t a mind to ; but then, 
if I were you, I would have a mind to!” The 
oddity of the remark and the earnestness of the tone, 10 
held the crowd silent, and the speaker continued, “ not 
because this is Faneuil Hall, nor for the honor of 
Massachusetts, nor because you are Boston boys, but 
because you are men, and because honorable and 
generous men always love fair play.” The mob was 15 
conquered. Free speech and fair play were secured. 
Public opinion can do what it has a mind to in this 
country. If it be debased and demoralized, it is the 
most odious of tyrants. It is Nero° and Caligula® 
multiplied by millions. Can there then be a more 20 
stringent public duty for every man — and the greater 
the intelligence the greater the duty — than to take 
care, by all the influence he can command, that the 
country, the majority, public opinion, shall have a 
mind to do only what is just and pure, and humane ? 25 

Gentlemen, leaving this college to take your part in 
the discharge of the duties of American citizenship, 
every sign encourages and inspires. The year that is 
now ending, the year that opens the second century 


202 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

of our history, has furnished the supreme proof that 
in a country of rigorous party division the purest 
patriotism exists. That, and that only, is the pledge 
of a prosperous future. No mere party fervor, or 
5 party fidelity, or party discipline, could fully restore a 
country torn and distracted by the fierce debate of a 
century and the convulsions of civil war; nothing 
less than a patriotism all-embracing as the summer 
air could heal a wound so wide. I know — no man 
10 better — how hard it is for earnest men to separate 
their country from their party, or their religion from 
their sect. But nevertheless the welfare of the country 
is dearer than the mere victory of party, as truth is 
more precious than the interest of any sect. You 
15 will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable 
theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a 
fool. But such was the folly of the Spartan Leonidas,® 
staying with his three hundred the Persian horde and 
teaching Greece the self-reliance that saved her. 
20 Such was the folly of the Swiss Arnold von Winkel- 
ried,° gathering into his own breast the host of Austrian 
spears, making his dead body the bridge of victory 
for his countrymen. Such was the folly of the Ameri- 
can Nathan Hale,® gladly risking the seeming dis- 
25 grace of his name, and grieving that he had but one 
life to give for his country. Such are the beacon- 
lights of a pure patriotism that burn forever in men’s 
memories and answer each other through the illumi- 
nated ages. And of the same grandeur, in less heroic 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 203 

and poetic form, was the patriotism of Sir Robert 
Peel° in recent history. He was the leader of a great 
party and the prime minister of England. The char- 
acter and necessity of party were as plain to him as 
to any man. But when he saw that the nationals 
welfare demanded the repeal of the corn-laws which 
he had always supported, he did not quail. Amply 
avowing the error of a life and the duty of avowing 
it — foreseeing the probable overthrow of his party 
and the bitter execration that must fall upon him, he lo 
tranquilly did his duty. With the eyes of England 
fixed upon him in mingled amazement, admiration, 
and indignation, he rose in the House of Commons 
to perform as great a service as any English states- 
man ever performed for his country, and in closing is 
his last speech in favor of the repeal, describing the 
consequences that its mere prospect had produced, 
he loftily exclaimed : “ Where there was dissatisfac- 

tion, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, 

I see there is peace ; where there was disloyalty, 1 20 
see there is loyalty. I see a disposition to confide in 
you, and not to agitate questions that are the founda- 
tions of your institutions.” When all was over, when 
he had left office, when his party was out of power, 
and the fury of party execration against him was spent, 25 
his position was greater and nobler than it had ever 
been. Cobden° said of him, “ Sir Robert Peel° has lost 
office, but he has gained a country” ; and Lord Dall- 
ing° said of him, what may truly be said of Washington : 


204 THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

“ Above all parties, himself a party, he had trained his 
own mind into a disinterested sympathy with the in- 
telligence of his country.” 

A public spirit so lofty is not confined to other ages 
5 and lands. You are conscious of its stirrings in your 
souls. It calls you to courageous service, and I am 
here to bid you obey the call. Such patriotism may 
be ours. Let it be your parting vow that it shall be 
yours. Bolingbroke° described a patriot king in Eng- 
10 land; I can imagine a patriot President in America. 
I can see him indeed the choice of a party, and called 
to administer the government when sectional jealousy 
is fiercest and party passion most inflamed. I can 
imagine him seeing clearly what justice and humanity, 
15 the national law and the national welfare, require him 
to do, and resolved to do it. I can imagine him pa- 
tiently enduring not only the mad cry of party hate, 
the taunt of “recreant” and “traitor,” of “renegade” 
and “ coward, ” but what is harder to bear, the 
20 amazement, the doubt, the grief, the denunciation, 
of those as sincerely devoted as he to the common 
welfare. I can imagine him pushing firmly on, trust- 
ing the heart, the intelligence, the conscience of his 
countrymen; healing angry wounds, correcting mis- 
25 understandings, planting justice on surer founda- 
tions, and, whether his party rise or fall, lifting his 
country heavenward to a more perfect union, pros- 
perity, and peace. This is the spirit of a patriot- 
ism that girds the commonwealth with the resistless 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 205 


splendor of the moral law — the invulnerable panoply 
of states, the celestial secret of a great nation and a 
happy people. 


NOTES 

A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright : The quotation 
is from Virtue, a poem by George Herbert, 1593-1633, a 
noted English clergyman and poet. 

Hesperides : These were three nymphs, daughters of 
Hesperus, guardians of the golden apples which Juno on 
her marriage with Jupiter received from Terra, and which 
were kept in a garden on an island beyond Mount Atlas 
in Africa. The tree which bore the apples was watched 
by a huge dragon. 

Moses Primrose : A character of blundering simplicity 
in Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield who bartered away a 
good horse for a gross of worthless green spectacles with 
tortoise shell rims and shagreen cases. 

Sharon: A fertile plain in West Palestine famous for 
its roses. 

Enna : A city in Sicily in a beautiful valley remarkable 
for its fruitful soil and numerous Springs. See 28 : 26. 

Arcadia ; A mountainous district in Greece in the heart 
of the Peloponnesus, the home of a simple pastoral people 
fond of music and dancing. 

Claude : Claude Lorraine, pseudonym of Claude Gelee, 
1300-1682, a French landscape painter. 

206 


NOTES 


207 


PRUE AND I 

3:2. Delmonico’s : A famous New York restaurant 
founded in 1825. In 1837, Delmonico’s was the largest 
and most pretentious establishment of its kind in the 
United States. From 1869 to 1884 it was the scene of the 
most brilliant social functions in that city. 

3 : 26. Lafitte : A celebrated wine from the district of 
IMedoc, in the department of the Gironde, France. 

4 ; 25. Ispahan : An important city of Persia, and in 
the 17th century, its capital. It was the seat of extensive 
manufacturing industries and was noted for its fine speci- 
mens of Oriental architecture. 

6 : 23. Psyche-glass : An upright mirror pinging on 
horizontal pivots, of sufficient length to refiect the whole 
figure. Said to be so called from Raphael’s full length 
painting of the fabled Psyche. Also called a cheval-glass, 
i.e. a glass supported by a frame. 

7 : 10. Alboni : Marietta Alboni, the most celebrated 
contralto of the 19th century. The only pupil of Rossini. 
She visited America in 1853. At Rossini’s funeral, in 1868, 
she sang with Patti. 

7 : 12. Ixion : A king of LapithsB in Thessaly, and 
father of the Centaurs. For his presumptuous impiety 
he was sent to hell and there bound to a perpetually re- 
volving fiery wheel. 

7 : 13. Juno : The daughter of Saturn and Ops, the 
wife of Jupiter, the queen of heaven, and the guardian 
deity of women, especially married women. 

7 : 19. en passant : in passing. 

12 : 20. potage k la Bisque : A soup made from crabs, 
shrimps, or the like. 

13: 11. Arethusa Madeira: A wine of a refined high 
flavor and remarkable softness, from the island of Madeira. 


208 


NOTES 


13 : 19. berthe : From the proper name Bertha. A 
small cape worn by women over the shoulders, usually 
crossed in front and open at the throat. 

13 : 28. contretemps (contretan) : An unexpected em- 
barrassing occurrence ; an awkward incident. 

21 : 15. Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587 : Mary 
Stuart, daughter of James V and Mary of Guise, beheaded 
by Queen Elizabeth. 

21:15. Nell Gwyn : Eleanor Gwyn, 1650-1687, an 
English actress, protegee of Charles II. 

21 : 16. Cleopatra : Queen of Egypt, wife of Ptolemy 
Dionysius, reestablished on her throne by Julius Caesar in 
B.c. 47. She captivated Mark Antony, who fell in the battle 
of Actium, whereupon she poisoned herself with an asp. 

23:11. supercargo {super — over, carga — charge): 
An agent on board ship sent by owners of the merchandise 
to have charge of the cargo, to sell it abroad and to pur- 
chase a return cargo. 

24 : 5. Eton : A town on the Thames opposite Windsor, 
Buckinghamshire, famous for its college, a public school 
founded by Henry VI. 

24 : 5. Thomas Gray, 1716-1771 : the author of the 
Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 

24 : 12. Thought would destroy their Paradise : From 
Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. 

28: 10. Coliseum (Colosseum > colossal ) : The Flavian 
amphitheatre in Rome, the greatest architectural monu- 
ment left by the Romans, begun by Vespasian in a.d. 75 
and completed and dedicated by Titus in a.d. 80. 

28:11. Campagna: A nearly level open plain sur- 
rounding Rome, 90 miles long by 40 broad, of volcanic 
origin ; now under reclamation. 

28 : 12. Alban Mount : The ridge in Ancient Latium 
overlooking the Alban Lake. Here lived several genera- 
tions of kings. The birthplace of Romulus and Remus. 


NOTES 


209 


28 : 15. Sorrento : A city on the southeast side of the 
Bay of Naples. Birthplace of Tasso. 

28 : 20. Damascus : The largest city in West Asia, con- 
nected with Beh-tit on the Mediterranean, 70 miles distant, 
by an excellent road built by the French. It is one of 
the great meeting places of the East and the West. It was 
especially noted for the production of steel of remarkable 
flexibility, strength, and keenness. Since 1907 the city 
has been lighted by electricity, and offers to the traveller 
strange contrasts of ancient and modern architecture. 

28 : 22. Parthenon : The temple of Athena Parthenos 
on the Acropolis at Athens, built by Pericles, dedicated 
438 B.c. Purest form of Doric architecture. 

28 : 23. Golden Horn : The crescent-shaped arm of 
the Bosphorus, upon which Constantinople is situated. 

28 : 25. Marathon : A plain in Attica, scene of the 
battle in which Miltiades, the Athenian general, defeated 
the Persian army and saved Greece, 490 b.c. 

28 ; 25. Hymettus : A mountain range immediately 
•south of Athens, noted for its marble and heath honey; 
3,370 feet high. 

28 ; 26. Enna : A city of Sicily, in a lovely vale, from 
which Proserpine was carried off by Pluto. She was 
gathering flowers in the adjacent meadow. See Tenny- 
son’s Edwin Morris. 

31 : 4. Ambrosia : The immortality-giving food of the 
gods. 

36 ; 17. Guinea ; A British colony and protectorate in 
Western Africa, the Gold Coast. 

36 : 8. Northwest passage ; A passage from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific along the northern coasts of 
America; the object of Arctic exploration for years, on 
account of its supposed value to commerce ; traversed by 
McClure, 1850-1854, and by R-oald Amundsen in 1905. 

39 ; 19. Grand Lama : same as Dalai-Lama. This was 


210 


NOTES 


a personage in whom, according to the beliefs of Lamaism, 
the soul of a Buddha is incarnated. 

39 : 20. The Man in the Moon : Some say it is the 
man who picked a bundle of sticks on the Sabbath day, 
Numbers xv, 32 ; others say it is Endymion taken there 
by Diana. Dante says it is Cain. 

39 : 21. Timbuctoo (Timbuktu) : an important trade 
route city in French West Africa on the southern edge of 
the Sahara, apparently founded in the 11th century and 
first known to the Europeans in the 14th. 

41 : 12. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. See 
Lamb’s Dream Children; a Reverie. 

46: 6. Alhambra: from El Hamrd, “ the red (castle).” 
The best exemplar of Moorish art in Spain and the citadel 
of the Moorish kings of Spain. 

46:11. KublaKhan: See Coleridge’s Kuhla Khan. 

46 : 13. Castle of Indolence : The title of a poem by 
James Thomson, a Scottish poet, 1700-1748. 

46 : 15. lordly pleasure house : See Tennyson’s The 
Palace of Art. 

I built my soul a lordly pleasure house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. 

I said, “ 0 Soul, make merry and carouse. 

Dear Soul, for all is well.” 

46:17. Owen Jones, 1809-1874: A Welsh art deco- 
rator and writer, author of Alhambra and of Illuminated 
Books of the Middle Ages. 

46 : 19. Moore’s Epicurean. A prose romance by 
Thomas Moore. The hero is Alciphron, the epicurean. 

46 : 22. Rogers’ Italy : Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855, was an 
English poet and essayist. Italy, a poem in blank verse, was 
first issued in 1822 : a splendid edition of the complete 
poem, with illustrations by Turner and Stothard, pro- 
duced at a cost of $ 75,000.00, appeared in 1830. 


NOTES 


211 


46:2. Jephthah’s daughter: Jephthah, a judge in 
Israel; lived about 1200 b.c. ; he sacrificed his daughter 
in fulfilment of a rash vow made after subduing the 
Ammonites. Judges xi. 34-40. 

46 : 3. Chevalier Bayard : the famous French knight, 
“ sans peur et sans reproche,” who fell in the battle of 
Sesia, April 30, 1524. 

46 : 4. fair Rosamond : Jane, daughter of Lord Clifford 
and favorite of Henry II, was, in 1177, concealed at 
Woodstock, where Queen Eleanor ferreted her out and 
compelled her to swallow poison. 

46 : 4. Dean Swift : Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745. An 
Irish satirist, dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, author of 
Gulliver's Travels. 

46 : 7. Marquis of Southampton : Earl of Southampton, 
1573-1624. Henry Wriothesley, an English statesman, 
patron of Shakespeare. 

46 : 10. Mephistopheles : A familiar spirit who plays 
a part in the Faust legend ; chief character in Marlowe’s 
Faust, where he appears as the cynical tempter. 

46 : 13. Mrs. Rawdon Crawley : Becky Sharp, who be- 
came the wife of Captain Rawdon Crawley, an imprudent 
and prodigal dragoon in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. 

46 : 14. The Faerie Queene, of Edmund Spenser, 1552- 
1599, published in 1596. 

46:16. Mr. Samuel Weller: the “boots” at “The 
White Hart,” afterwards servant to Mr. Pickwick, chief 
character in Dickens’s famous novel. The Pickwick 
Papers. 

46 : 17. Lord of Misrule : This was a mock dignitary 
who presided over Christmas revels in the Middle Ages. 
He was aided by a staff of from 20 to 60 officials and 
furnished with all the paraphernalia of office. 

46 ; 17. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784 : a noted 
English writer, the author of Rasselas and The English 


212 


NOTES 


Dictionary. Abbot of Unreason, (Father Howleglas) : 
A character in Sir Walter Scott’s The Abbot. 

46 : 18. Major Dobbin ; The awlrward and adoring 
friend of George Osborne ; the patient suitor of his widow 
Amelia, in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. 

46: 19. ‘Mrs. Fry: Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney), 1780- 
1845, an English Quaker preacher and prison-reformer. 

46 : 20. Alcibiades : Athenian politician and general. 
He perished in Phrygia in 404 b.c. at the instance of The 
Thirty Tyrants of Athens. Homer : author of The Iliad 
and The Odyssey, conjecturally of the 9th century. Plato : 
The Greek philosopher 427-347 b.c. Aspasia : A celebrated 
woman of ancient Greece, noted for her genius, beauty and 
political influence, who lived about 460 b.c. 

46 : 21. Ninon de I’Enclos, 1610-1706 : A French beauty 
and social leader whose salon was the rendezvous of men 
like Moli^re and Voltaire. Mrs. Battle: a character in 
Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia, in real life Sarah Burney, 
the mother of Lamb’s great friend Martin Burney. All 
Mrs. Battle required was a “ clear fire, a clean hearth, and 
the rigor of the game (whist).” 

46 : 22. Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603. 

46:23. Lady Jane Grey, 1537-1554: great grand- 
daughter of Henry VII, made heir to the English throne 
by Edward VI ; tried for treason and beheaded. 

46: 24. Joan of Arc, 1412-1431 : the maid of Orleans 
who compelled the English to raise the siege of Orleans. 
She was defeated by the English in 1430, given a form 
of trial at Rouen, and condemned. She was burned at 
the stake. May 30, 1431. In 1909 she was beatified by 
Pius X. 

46:26. Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618: English navi- 
gator, soldier, and courtier. 

46:26. Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340-1400: “Father of 
English Poetry,” author of Canterbury Tales, 1388. 


NOTES 


213 


46:26. Robert Browning, 1812-1889: famous Vic- 
torian poet, author of Po.racelsus, etc. 

46:27. Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864: English 
poet, dramatist, and writer, author of Imaginary Conversa- 
tions. 

46:27. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832: 
author of Faust. 

46 : 28. Tasso, Torquato, 1544-1595 : son of Ber- 
nardo and author of Jerusalein Delivered. Subject of 
Goethe’s tragedy of Torquato Tasso. Iphigenia : Daughter 
of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, priestess in the tem- 
ple of Diana, subject of Goethe’s play of the same 
name. 

47:1. Dante, Alighieri, 1265-1321 : the great Ital- 
ian poet, soldier, and exile, author of The Divine Comedy. 

47 : 1. Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881 : noted Scotch au- 
thor of Sartor Resartus, The French Revolution, etc. 

47 : 3. The Old Harry : from the Hebrew seirim, 
“ hairy ones,’’ translated “ devils ’’ in Leviticus xvii. 7, 
probably meaning “ he-goats.” 

47 : 4. William of the Wisp : from Icelandic villa, 
a-going astray. A wisp was a mythical Elf that floated 
by night over a heath or morass. 

* 47:5. The Laureate Tennyson : Alfred Tennyson, 

• 1809-1892, in November, 1850, made Poet Laureate of 

.England. 


I 47 : 6. “ They ” : This is a reference to the indefinite 

'persons who might be likely to comment on such a party 
in the event of Tennyson’s failing to compose the ode. 

47 : 9. Miles Coverdale : the allusion here is to 
Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

47: 11. Blythedale : This is a reference to The Blithe- 
dale Romance, Hawthorne’s novel, founded on the Brook 
Farm experiment. 

47:20. Robert Burton, 1577-1640: Author of The 


214 


NOTES 


Anatomy of Melancholy. Jacques; the melancholy phi- 
losopher in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. 

47 : 23. Rejoicing upon the new year’s coming of age ;• j 
See Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia. 

47 : 29. Semiramis : the legendary wife of Ninus, ; 
founder of Nineveh, worshipped as a divinity. ' 

48 : 5. Cymbeline : Shakespeare’s play founded on ( 
the life of Cymbeline, an early king of Britain. ' 

48 : 6. Canterbury Tale : a tale told by a pilgrim to 
Canterbury, or one told in a similar vein ; a fable. 

49; Motto. Come unto these yellow sands; Ariel’s : 
song. Act I, Scene ii, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 

^9: Motto. Argosies: See Tennyson’s Locksley Hall. ' 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, i 
Saw the Vision of the World, and all the wonder that 
should be; 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic 
sails. 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 
bales. 

♦ ♦***♦* 

Till the war drums throbbed no longer, and the battle flags 
were furled. 

In the Parliament of Man ; the Federation of the world. ■ 

49 ; 12. Greenwich Hospital : An institution at Green- 
wich, England, for naval pensioners. Connected with it j 
at present is a school for education of sons of seamen and ■ 
also the Royal United Service Museums. = ! 

60 ; 6. Trafalgar Square : This is the location of the 
famous monument with its column and lions erected as i 
a tribute to the memory of Lord Nelson, 1758-1805. 
See Captain A. T. Mahan’s Life of Nelson. 

60 : 19. Savoyards : residents of Savoie and Haute-Sa- ; 
voie ; departments of France, south of the Lake of Geneva. 


NOTES 


215 


60 ; 20. Cockneys : A name applied to Londoners 
born within the sound of the bells of St. Mary le Bow 
Church. 

61 : 8. Undine ; a female water sprite without a soul, 
with which she might be endowed only by marrying 
a mortal and bearing a child. Heroine of Fouque’s 
romance of the name. Melusina: a fairy of French 
romance; daughter of King Elunas of Albania and the 
fairy Pressina. 

61 : 20. Armada : An armed force, but specially the 
great Spanish fleet sent against England in 1588. Only 
54 of the 129 vessels returned to Spain, the rest being de- 
stroyed in a great storm. 

62 : 19. Madagascar : the third largest island in the 
world, to the .southeast of Africa. Its area is 230,000 
square miles. 

62 : 20. Ceylon : A British colony in the Indian ocean, 
southeast of India, with an area of 25,332 square miles. 

63 : 6. The Happy Islands : Imaginary islands in the 
west abounding with the choicest products of nature. 
Hither the favorites of the gods were conveyed without 
dying and dwelt in never ending joy. 

67 : 8. Vittoria Colonna, 1490-1547 ; An Italian poetess, 
friend of Michael Angelo and Cardinal Pole. 

67 : 9. Villa d’Este ; The residence near Rome of the 
I ancient and illustrious family of Este. The palace dates 
from 1551. 

67 : 10. Beatrice ; Beatrice Portinari, the object of 
I Dante’s passion and the heroine of his Vita Nuova. 

67:11. Leone bianco: The Hotel Europa, DanielWs, 

\ and the Leone bianco (“ white lion ”) were hotels patronized 
■by American tourists. 

67 : 13. Marino Faliero, 1278-1355 : a doge of Venice 
beheaded for treason, subject of Byron’s tragedy of that 
iname. 


216 


NOTES 


57 : 15. Sensa amare : 

“ Ah, without loving, 

To go upon the sea. 

With the bride of the Sea, 

I cannot be consoled.’’ 

68 : 20. A painted ship : From Coleridge’s Ancient 
Mariner. 

69 : 9. Ariadne : daughter of Minos of Crete. She fell 
in love with Theseus. After her death Dionysus gave her , 
a place among the gods. I 

69 : 10. Theseus : the great legendary hero of Attica. 

60 : 16. Lucrezia Borgia, 1480-1519 : sister of Cesare | 
Borgia and wife of Alfonso, duke of Bisceglia. She is j 
the heroine of the opera by Donizetti. • | 

60 ; 17. Council of Ten, 1310-1797 : a tribunal of ten, | 
afterwards seventeen, members who governed the Repub- • 
lie of Venice. I 

60:19. Masaniello (Tommaso Aniello), 1622-1647: j 
a Neapolitan insurgent leader; hero of the opera of the I 
same name by Auber (Daniel Francois Esprit), 1782-1871, I 
author of Fra Diavolo. Ulysses : the Latin form of the i 
Greek Odysseus, one of the heroes of the Trojan war. | 
See Stephen Phillips’ beautiful drama Ulysses. I 

60 : 20. Syrens : sea nymphs in Greek mythology who i 
sat on the shores of an island between Circe’s isle and I 
Scylla near the coast of Italy, and lured sailors to their j 
doom. 

60 : 20. Mesrour : Chief of the Eunuchs, a character 
in the Arabian Nights. 

60 : 21. Zobeide : a character in the history of Zobeide, 
in the Arabian Nights, wife of the Caliph Haroun-al- 
Raschid. 

60 : 24. Lotus : the rose of ancient Egypt, the favorite 
flower of the country, the symbol of blissful dreams. 


NOTES 


217 


66:7. gonfalon: an ensign fixed to a revolving frame 
or a crossyard, generally with two or three streamers. 

66 : 24. Aurelian : Lucius, or Valerius, Domitius, an 
Emperor of Rome. Born in Dacia about 212 a.d. He 
became Emperor in 270, and made the Danube the 
boundary of the Roman Empire. He was assassinated 
in a campaign against the Persians in 275. 

66 : 24. Zenobia : Septimia, queen of Palmyra. About 
270 A.D. nearly all of the East submitted to her sway. 
When Aurelian assumed the purple, he marched against 
and captured her (272 a.d.), taking her in triumph to Rome, 
where she was allowed to live at Tivoli. 

66 : 19. Thomas Hood, 1798-1845 : poet and humorist. 
See W. Jerrold’s Thomas Hood, his Life and Times. 

66 : 20. Lovely Inez : From the poem Fair Ines. 

' 68 : 16. Hebe : the goddess of youth and cup-bearer to 
the gods on hlount Olympus. 

72 : 29. Berenice : See 118 : 2. 

73 : 2. Argonauts : the heroes who sailed in the Argo 
with Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece. 

74 : 25. Bucentoro : A poetical name of Venice, having 
its origin in the ancient ceremony of the espousal of the 
Adriatic, during which the doge, from the barge called 
The Bucentaur, in the presence of his courtiers and amid 
circumstances of great splendor, threw a ring into the sea, 
uttering the words, “We wed thee, 0 Sea, in sign of a 
true and perpetual dominion.” 

76:26. Atlantis: A mythical island of vast extent 
mentioned by Plato and other ancient writers and placed 
by them in the far West. 

76 : 4. El Dorado : Any region rich in gold ; Sp., el, 
the, dorado, golden. 

76 : 5. Philopater : Ptolemy IV. Hiero of Syracuse : 
Celebrated throughout the Greek world as a patron of the 
fine arts and of men of genius. 


218 


NOTES 


76 : 12. Milesian ; of or pertaining to the city of Mile- 
tus, Asia Minor. 

78 : 18. odalisque : a female slave in an eastern harem. 

78 : 22. Cathay : a poetical name for China. 

86 : 26. St. Kitt’s : one of the British Leeward Islands, 
65 square miles in area. 

90 : 24. Parse e : A Zoroastrian of India ; an adherent 
of the old Persian religion, whose ancestors fled from 
Persia to India about the 8th century on account of 
Mohammedan persecution. 

92:15. Prince Charlie, 1720-1788: Charles Edward, 
son of James Stuart, and grandson of James the Second, 
who in 1745 made a romantic but unsuccessful invasion 
of Scotland. 

97 : 23. Vis-^-vis : face to face. 

102:23. Xerxes, pronounced zUrksez, 519(?)-465 b.c. : 
A Persian king. He invaded Greece with an enormous 
army and fleet. After being defeated at Salamis he re- 
treated to Persia. 

113 : 10. Plutus : the Greek personification of riches. 
He was fabled to have been blinded by Zeus, so that his 
gifts should be distributed without discernment of the 
character of the recipients. 

116 : Title. The Flying Dutchman : a legendary spec- 
tral ship supposed to be seen near the Cape of Good Hope 
in stormy weather. Its skipper was doomed to beat 
against the wind until Judgment day, for blasphemously 
swearing that he would double the Cape against the wind. 

116:6. Jacques Jasmin, 1798-1864: A French poet 
who wrote in the Provencal patois; known as “The 
Barber Poet of Agen.” 

116 : 17. Memnon : one of the seven wonders of the 
world. This was a colossal statue on the left bank of 
the Nile, which being struck with the rays of the morning 
sun, gave out musical sounds. 


NOTES 


219 


117:28. Orion: A large and brilliant constellation 
south of the Zodiac, represented as a hunter with belt 
and sword. 

118:1. Lyre: The Constellation Lyra. Cassiopea: 
A constellation opposite The Great Bear. 

118 : 2. Berenice : Berenice, wife of Ptolemy III of 
Egypt, who to pay a vow sacrificed her hair to Aphrodite. 
A day later the hair disappeared, the legend tells us, blown 
by the winds to heaven where it formed the constellation 
Coma Berenices. 

118 : 16. Beatrice Cenci, 1577-1599 : A Roman lady, 
beheaded for taking part in the murder of her father. 
Her life is the theme of Shelley’s fine tragedy The 
Cenci. Tasso : see note to 46 : 28. 

118 : 17. Leonora : sister of the duke Alfonso II d’Este. 
Heroine of Goethe’s play of Tasso. 

118:24. Paestum: an ancient Greek city in Salerno 
province, Italy ; the site of fine ruins. 

118 : 29. Cashmere : or Kashmir, a state in India famous 
for its shawl-weaving, lacquer-work, and metal ornaments. 

120 : 10. Vrouw : a Dutch word meaning wife. 

130 : 9. Satan : See Milton’s Paradise Lost. 

132: 11. pearl-of-Oman : Oman, a sultanate in S. E. 
Arabia, 82,000 square miles in territory. 

133 : 17. Le Baron Munchausen : 1720-1797, member 
of a Hanoverian family, reputed author of Baron Miinch- 
hausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns 
in Russia (London, 1785). 

136 : 28. Emperor Hadrian : Hadrianus Publius Elius, 
14th Roman Emperor, 117-138 a.d. 

136 : 29. Antinous : a model of manly beauty ; page 
of Hadrian, the Roman Emperor. 

137 : 3. Philosopher’s Stone : the substance which 
could transmute base metal to gold. In searching for 
this treasure porcelain and gunpowder were discovered. 


220 


NOTES 


137 : 6. Orellana, 1500-1545 ; A Spanish explorer who 
gave his name to the Amazon River. He was one of the 
lieutenants of Pizarro. 

141 ; 13. Prester John : A mediaeval legendary priest 
and king. 

144 : 29. Utopia : An imaginary island with a perfect 
social and political system. The scene of Sir Thomas 
Moore’s book of that name. 

146 : 4. Cockaigne : An imaginary region of luxury 
and ease. The lotus land of poetry. 

160 : 4. Howards ; Members of a noble English family 
dating from the time of Edward I, progenitors of the pres- 
ent duke of Norfolk. 

160 : 5. Plantagenets : (from the badge of a sprig of 
bloom — planta genista). The surname of an Angevin 
house which in 1154 succeeded to the throne of England 
reigning until 1485. Montmorencies ; Members of one of 
the oldest and most distinguished families of France. 

164:11. Poictiers (Poitiers): Capital of Vienne de- j 
partment, France. Here occurred the defeat of the Sara- 
cens in 732 and the defeat of the French by Edward, the j 
Black Prince, in 1356. 

166 : 23. Lord John Russell, 1792-1878 : English states- 
man and Prime Minister, created Earl Russell in 1861. 

166 : 25. Lord William Russell, 1639-1683 : an English 
statesman and patriot; beheaded for alleged conspiracy 
in the Rye House plot. 

167:11. noblesse oblige: literally, “nobility compels 
the obligation that rests on those gently born.” 

160 : Motto. Why let the stricken deer go weep : Ham- 
let, Act III, Scene ii. 

163 : 6. Sir Philip Sidney, 1554-1586 : English courtier 
and soldier, author of The Arcadia. 

173 : 22. George Wither, 1588—1667 : noted English 
poet and hymn writer. 


NOTES 


221 


173 : 24. If she be not fair for me : The lines are from 
the poem The Shepherd^s Resolution. 

176 : 20. I made a posy ; From George Herbert’s poeni, 
Life. 

“ I made a posy, while. the day ran by : 

Here will I smell my remnant out and tie 
My life within this band. 

But time did beckon, to the flowers, and they 
By noon most cunningly did steal away. 

And withered in my hand.!’ 


THE PUBLIC DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN 

182 : 14. Goethe : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749- 
1832. 

182:26. Theodore Parker, 1810-1860: Noted New 
England clergyman and advocate of the abolition of slavery. 

183:11. Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784: author of 
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. 

183:25. The venerated teacher: Dr. Tayler Lewis, 
1802-1877, Professor of Greek and Oriental Languages in 
Union College. 

184 : 16. Julius Caesar, 100-44 b.c. : Roman general, 
statesman, and historian. 

184 : 18. James II, of England (James VII of Scotland), 
1633-1701 : a king of Great Britain and Ireland ; son of 
Charles I ; deposed and defeated by William III at the 
battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690. 

186 : 19. Pharisee : One of an ancient Jewish party 
who paid scrupulous regard to tradition and external 
ceremonies of the written law, and who by their sense of 
superior sanctity held themselves aloof from the other 
Jews ; Luke xviii. 12. 

186 : 8. Jeremy Diddler : a needy, sponging swindler in 


222 


NOTES 


Kenney’s farce, Racing the Wind. Dick Turpin: a 
notorious English highwayman, hanged in 1739. 

186 : 14. Jonathan Wild : an English robber, hanged 
in 1725. The allusion here is to William M. Tweed, a well- 
known political boss of New York. 

188 : 18. Agamemnon : in Greek legendary history. 
The son of Atreus, king of Mycen®, one of the most noted 
of Greek heroes. 

188 : 25. Lord Chatham : William Pitt, first Earl of 
Chatham, 1708-1778, famous Whig statesman and orator ; 
opposed taxation of British colonies. 

188:28. Sir Robert Walpole : later first Earl of Oxford, 
1676-1745, noted English statesman, and prime minister. 

189:12. Pericles, 495(?)-429 b.c. : celebrated Athe- 
nian statesman and orator. 

189 : 16. Agora : A popular assembly for political or 
other purposes, a place for popular assembly. 

189 : 17. Samuel Adams, 1722-1803 : noted New Eng- 
land statesman and patriot ; one of the leaders of the Revo- 
lution and a signer of The Declaration of Independence. 

189 : 27. Faneuil Hall : built in Boston in 1743 by Peter 
Faneuil, an American merchant ; an early meeting place 
of American patriots. 

190:1. Thomas Jefferson: born at Shadwell, Va., 
April 2, 1743; died at Monticello, Va., July 4, 1826. 
Third President and author of “ The Declaration of In- 
dependence.” 

190 : 9. Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di : 1810-1861, 
Italian statesman, and first premier of new kingdom of 
Italy, April, 1861. 

190 : 12. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, 1815- 
1898 : one of the chief figures in the Franco-Prussian war, 
from 1871 to 1890 first chancellor of the German Empire. 

190 : 13. William Ewart Gladstone, 1809-1898 : well- 
known British Liberal leader and prime minister. 


NOTES 


223 


191 : 8. Corn laws : a series of laws, extending from 
1360 to 1846, regulating the grain trade of England. 

192 : 25. sophistry : The art of the Greek sophists, 
a system of reasoning sound in appearance only. 

194: 18. Federalists: a party formed in 1787 to sup- 
port the constitution of the United States, which was the 
controlling influence of the National government under 
Washington and John Adams. Jacobins: A society of 
French revolutionists organized in 1789, so called from 
their meeting place in a Jacobin convent in Paris in which 
they met. It was dominated by Robespierre and Marat, 
during the Reign of Terror. 

194 : 19. Robespierre : Maximilien Marie Isidore, 
1758-1794: the Jacobin leader who mainly incited the 
Revolution of 1789 ; his execution led to the end of the 
Reign of Terror. Marat : Jean Paul, 1744-1793 : French 
revolutionary leader; associate of Danton and Robes- 
pierre ; assassinated by Charlotte Corday. 

194:24. John Jay, 1745-1829: First Chief Justice 
of the United States and a prominent Federalist. 

196 : 9. Castor and Pollux : twin brothers in Greek 
and Roman mythology : sons of Jupiter and Leda ; the 
constellation, “ The Twins ’’ or “ Gemini.” 

196 : 12. Andrew Johnson, 1808-1875 : seventeenth 
President of the United States ; succeeding Lincoln on 
April 15, 1865. 

197 : 18. DeWitt Clinton, 1769-1828 : governor of 
New York ; he took a great part in the building of the Erie 
canal, the construction of which lasted from 1817-1825. 

197 : 19. Demosthenes, 384-322 b.c. : Athenian orator 
and patriot. 

197:21. Apelles: a famous Greek painter of the 4th 
century. Phidias, 500?-^32 b.c.: Athenian architect 
and sculptor famous as the designer of the sculptures of the 
Parthenon. 


224 


NOTES 


197 ; 29. Caius Marius, 157-86 b.c. ; celebrated Roman 
general whose rivalry with Sulla caused the first Civil War 
in 88 B.c. 

198 : 1. Lucius Cornelius Sylla, 138-78 b.c. : Roman 
general and dictator, defeating Marius, and remaining as 
dictator until 79 b.c., when he resigned. 

198:26. William Kidd, 1650-1701: A British sea- 
captain who was sent to suppress piracy in the Indian 
ocean in 1696 ; turned pirate ; arrested in Boston in 1699 ; 
two years later hanged in London. 

199 : 25. In hoc signo vinces : Under this standard 
thou shalt conquer. 

201:19. Nero: Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, 
37-68 A.D., fifth Roman emperor, noted for his cruelty and 
profligacy. Caligula: Caius Caesar, 12-41 a.d., third 
emperor of Rome. 

202 : 17. Leonidas : Commander of the Spartans at the 
pass of Thermopylae. 

202 : 21. Arnold von Winkelried : Swiss patriot who 
is said to have decided the Swiss victory at Sempach in i 
1386. 

202:24. Nathan Hale, 1755-1776: Entered the pa- 
triot army in 1775 ; hanged as a spy in 1776. 

203 : 2. Sir Robert Peel, 1778-1850 : famous Tory 
leader, twice Prime Minister of England. 

203 : 27. Richard Cobden, 1804-1865 : English states- i 

man and political economist ; free trader, and chief sup- 1 
porter of the Anti-Corn Law League. I 

203:29. Lord Balling, 1801-1872: William Henry | 
Lytton, British diplomatist and author; in 1849 he con- | 
eluded the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty at Washington; in 
1871 elevated to the peerage as Lord Balling and Bulwer. 

204 : 9. Bolingbroke, 1678-1751 : Henry St. John, first 
Viscount Bolingbroke; statesman and political writer; 
friend of Pope and Swift. i 


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